A car bomb attack by Kurdish militants on a police station in southeastern Turkey killed three people and wounded more than 30 on Wednesday, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said, a day after a bomb targeting police in Istanbul killed 11.
The explosion in the town of Midyat destroyed the facade of a five-story block, damaged other buildings and sent a plume of thick black smoke rising over the area. Hospital sources said police and civilians were among the wounded, Reuters reported.
Clashes broke out between security forces and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in Midyat as the attack took place, security sources said. There has been no claim for Tuesday’s attack in Istanbul, in which a car bomb ripped through a police bus during the morning rush hour. But Kurdish militants have staged similar attacks on the security forces, including in Istanbul and the capital Ankara.
The town is in Mardin, a province bordering Syria and part of Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast, where the PKK has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy. Violence has spiraled since a ceasefire collapsed almost a year ago.
The unrest has been fueled by the war in Syria. Turkey says the PKK—considered a terrorist organization by Ankara, the European Union and the United States—has deep ties to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia fighting just across the border.
The groups do not deny links. The PKK founded the YPG as a Syrian organization a decade ago and both are inspired by Abdullah Ocalan, who led the PKK from inception and lived in Syria shortly before his capture in 1999.
