Turkey suicide blast targets police

11 killed in truck bombing claimed by Kurdish militant group

Smoke billows after a police checkpoint near Cizre, Turkey, was attacked Friday by Kurdish militants using a truck bomb.
Smoke billows after a police checkpoint near Cizre, Turkey, was attacked Friday by Kurdish militants using a truck bomb.

ANKARA, Turkey -- A Kurdish suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden truck into a checkpoint near a police station Friday in southeast Turkey, killing at least 11 police officers and wounding 78 other people, the prime minister said.

photo

AP

Emergency services personnel work the scene Friday after Kurdish militants attacked a police checkpoint in Cizre, Turkey, with an explosives-laden truck, killing several police officers and wounding dozens more.

The attack struck the checkpoint 50 yards from a main police station near the town of Cizre, in the mainly Kurdish Sirnak province that borders Syria. Television footage showed black smoke rising from the mangled truck and the three-story police station gutted from the explosion.

Rebels linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party claimed the attack -- the latest in a string of bombings by the group targeting police or military vehicles and facilities.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim vowed to "destroy the terrorists."

"No terrorist organization can take the Turkish Republic hostage," he told reporters in Istanbul. "We will give these scoundrels every response they deserve."

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, "This attack, which comes at a time when Turkey is engaged in an intense struggle against terrorist organizations both within and outside its borders, only serves to increase our determination as a country and a nation."

Turkey has sent tanks across the Syrian border after weeks of deadly attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the Islamic State extremist group. The operation aims to help Syrian rebels retake Jarablus, a key Islamic State-held border town, and to contain the expansion of Syrian Kurdish militias linked to the Workers' Party.

In a statement on the website of the Workers' Party's military wing, the militant group said the Cizre attack was in retaliation for jailed Workers' Party leader Abdullah Ocalan's "isolation" on a prison island off Istanbul. The rebel leader has been denied visits since April 2015, as a peace process between the Workers' Party and the government began to falter.

Violence between the Workers' Party and the security forces resumed last year after the collapse the two-year peace process in July. Hundreds of security force members, militants and civilians have been killed since.

At the same time, Turkey has been afflicted by deadly attacks blamed on Islamic State militants, including a suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding in southeast Turkey last week that killed 54 people, and an attack on Istanbul's main airport in June that killed 44 people.

According to the Sirnak governor's office, three of those wounded in Friday's attack were civilians.

Cizre was placed under 24-hour curfew for several weeks earlier this year as the security forces opened operations to root out Kurdish militants.

Since hostilities with the Workers' Party resumed last summer, more than 600 Turkish security personnel and thousands of Workers' Party militants have been killed, according to the Anadolu Agency. Human-rights groups say hundreds of civilians also have been killed.

The Workers' Party is considered a terror organization by Turkey and its allies. Some 40,000 people have been killed since the conflict started in 1984.

The attacks on police come as the country is still reeling from a violent coup attempt July 15 that killed at least 270 people. The government has blamed the failed coup on the supporters of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and has embarked on a sweeping crackdown on his followers.

On Thursday, Kurdish rebels opened fire at security forces protecting a convoy carrying Turkey's main opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the northeast, killing a soldier and wounding two others, officials said. The rebel statement Friday said the target of the attack was Turkey's security forces, not Kilicdaroglu.

Information for this article was contributed by Dusan Stojanovic and Cinar Kiper of The Associated Press.

A Section on 08/27/2016

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