Two car bombings — less than 12 hours apart — killed at least six people in total and injured over 200, officials said Thursday, blaming the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Another three soldiers and a guard were killed in a third attack that targeted a military convoy in the southeastern town of Bitlis on Thursday, said state-run Anadolu news agency, which also blamed the PKK.
The latest attack, which injured six other troops, was carried out using a handmade bomb that detonated as the armored vehicle drove by, the agency said.
The rebels, who have been fighting a deadly insurgency against the Turkish state for three decades, appear to have intensified their attacks since the failed coup on July 15 against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The car bomb attack that hit the police headquarters in the city of Elazig early Thursday left three police officers dead and scores more wounded.
The blast left much of the four-story building in ruins, with television footage showing a large plume of black smoke billowing into the sky while rescuers searched for survivors.
The city, a conservative nationalist bastion, had been spared much of the violence that has rocked the Kurdish-dominated southeast since a two-and-a-half year ceasefire collapsed in 2015.
Officials blamed the PKK, with one accusing the rebels of collaborating with supporters of US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of orchestrating the coup bid.
“We will thwart the PKK like we thwarted FETO (Fethullah Terrorist Organization),” Defence Minister Fikri Isik told Anadolu, using the name Ankara gives to the movement led by Gulen.
CNN-Turk television reported that 146 people had been injured, quoting city governor Murat Zorluoglu, AFP reported.
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