Ankara : At least seven people were killed and 54 wounded in two explosions in southeastern Turkey, according to media reports.
The attacks in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir and in Mardin near the Syrian border targeted the security forces, but there were many civilians among the victims, CNN reported.
According to DPA, nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the government blamed the outlawed PKK. A bomb exploded next to a police bus as it passed a hospital on a busy street in Mardin, killing three people and wounding at least 50 including four police officers, according to government sources. Five people died in the bombing of another police bus in the Sur district of Diyarbakir.
The Turkish state has been battling Kurdish militants in the southeast for more than 30 years, a ceasefire between the state and the PKK collapsed in 2015, after holding for more than two years.
Earlier Wednesday, five Turkish soldiers were killed and seven injured in an attack near a border post in Sirnak province, along the country’s southeastern border with Iraq. The PKK was also suspected of carrying out the attack.—AG/IINA