Car bomb attack on Turkish police station kills three and wounds 170

At least three police officers were killed and another 170 people wounded by a car bomb at a police station in Turkey on Thursday. They were caught in the blast which reduced offices inside the police station to ruins just as officers had begun arriving for work at the complex in the eastern Turkish city of Elazig. No one immediately claimed responsibility, but defence minister Fikri Isik said it was the work of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, deemed a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the U.S and the European Union. “We will thwart the PKK like we thwarted FETO,” he said, referring to Fethullah Gulen who Ankara blames for the attempted coup last month.

We have seen once more … that the PKK is a bloody organisation and does not hesitate to kill the people it says it is fighting for

Defence minister Fikri Isik

The PKK has carried out dozens of attacks on police and military posts in the largely Kurdish southeast since 2015. But Elazig, a conservative province that votes in large numbers for the ruling AK Party, had been spared violence until now. The bombing came hours after another attack In Van province. Two police officers and one civilian were killed and 73 people were wounded late on Wednesday when a car bomb exploded near a police station. The Van governor’s office said the PKK was responsible. On Monday, eight people – five police and three civilians – were killed in a PKK car bomb attack on a police traffic control building on a highway leading south-east from Diyarbakir.

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