The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
Diyarbakir /Â AFP
A news outlet linked to the IS said its fighters staged a bombing that killed 11 people in southeastern Turkey, according to US-based monitors, after Ankara blamed Kurdish militants for the attack.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Friday’s bombing was carried out by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has regularly targeted security forces since ending a truce in 2015.
The early morning attack on a police headquarters in the Kurdish-majority of Diyarbakir left 11 people dead, including two police.
The state-run Anadolu news agency said the toll rose to 11 on Saturday after two more civilian victims succumbed to their wounds.
It left a swathe of devastation, blowing out the entire front of a nearby apartment block and leaving the surroundings covered in rubble.
Emergency workers on Saturday began to sift through the damage while residents arrived to pick up whatever belongings they could salvage, an AFP photographer said.
The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) said six of its MPs, including its co-leaders, had narrowly escaped injury in the attack as they were being held in the police complex.
The US-based SITE Intelligence Group cited an “insider source” for the IS-affiliated Amaq news agency as saying that “Fighters from the Islamic State detonated an explosives-laden vehicle parked in front of a Turkish police headquarters in Diyarbakir.