Kurdish suicide bombing kills 5 in Turkish town bordering Syria
Print Edition
A KURDISH rebel suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle outside a police headquarters near Turkey’s border with Syria yesterday, killing four other people, Turkish officials said.
An Interior Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said two civilians and two women police officers were killed, in addition to the bomber.
The attack in the town of Midyat, in Mardin province, came amid a surge in violence in the country and a day after a car bomb hit a police vehicle in Istanbul, killing 11 during the morning rush hour. It took place as funerals for the Istanbul victims were under way.
The Interior Ministry official said authorities had strong evidence indicating that the outlawed rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, had carried out both Tuesday’s attack in Istanbul and the bombing in Mardin.
Asked about the attack in Midyat, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the “murderous PKK organization” was behind it. However, Ibrahim Kalin, the spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, later said the prime minister had meant that the PKK had carried out the Istanbul attack, adding that it was too early to say for certain who was responsible for the bombing in Midyat.
News reports said the assailant rammed the vehicle into protective concrete blocks surrounding Midyat’s main police station located on a street lined with cafeterias, shops and businesses. Television images from the scene showed thick smoke rising from the site of the attack, which destroyed the facade of the police headquarters building and blew out windows of nearby buildings. One of the two police women killed in the attack was pregnant, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
The private Dogan news agency said the vehicle was laden with a half-ton of explosives.
As with previous terror attacks, authorities yesterday imposed a media gag order, barring the broadcast and publication of graphic images from the aftermath of the Midyat attack and the reporting of details of the police investigation.
Turkey has been hit by a series of attacks in the past year. PKK rebels have targeted police and military personnel since July, when a fragile peace process between the rebels and the government collapsed. The Islamic State group has also been blamed for a series of bombings in Turkey, which is part of the United States-led coalition against IS.
The PKK has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state in a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The group is considered a terror organization by Turkey and its allies.
Anadolu, quoting security forces, said Turkish warplanes carried out air strikes against PKK targets in northern Iraq and in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeastern province of Diyarbakir yesterday.
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