DIYARBAKIR, Turkey: A car bomb killed three
people and wounded 45 when it struck a police vehicle on Tuesday in
Diyarbakir, the main city in southeastern Turkey where security forces
are trying to crush a Kurdish militant insurgency, the governor's office
said.
Explosives in the vehicle were detonated from a
distance as an armoured police van passed, wounding 12 police officers,
the governor's office said. A Reuters witness heard a big explosion in
the city centre, followed by ambulance sirens. Black smoke rose over the
site and debris was scattered along a wide avenue.
Five of the wounded were inmates being moved
while under police custody, a security source said. A senior official
said some of them were members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party
(PKK) militant group being taken to hospital and that they may have been
targeted for being suspected informants.
The PKK has waged a three-decade insurgency
against the Turkish state to push for Kurdish autonomy in the southeast.
It is considered a terrorist organisation by Ankara, the European Union
and the United States.
Parts of Diyarbakir and other towns in the
region bordering Syria, Iraq and Iran have seen intense security
operations since conflict between the state and PKK re-ignited in July
2015.
Hundreds of police and soldiers and thousands
of PKK fighters have since been killed, according to official figures.
Opposition parties say more than 500 civilians have also been killed.
(Reporting by Seyhmus Cakan, Orhan Coskun and
Humeyra Pamuk; Writing by Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Nick Tattersall
and Robin Pomeroy)
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