(Diyarbakir) Nine people were injured on Friday, including eight policemen, when a bomb exploded as a police vehicle passed near Diyarbakir, the main city in southeastern Turkey, mainly populated by Kurds, local authorities said.
According to a statement from the governor’s office, the bomb was hidden in a car parked on the roadside, which exploded when a riot police van passed late at night around 5 a.m. local time.
These police were traveling on the main road leading from Diyarbakir to Mardin, a tourist town founded by the Assyrians, 30 km as the crow flies from the Syrian border.
The attack has not been claimed.
This explosion, the first in more than five years near Diyabarkir, comes in a tense context, after a series of air raids by the Turkish army against groups of Kurdish fighters settled in northeastern Syria, including the Party Workers of Kurdistan (PKK) and the YPG, People’s Protection Units, allied with the United States in the fight against the jihadists of the Islamic State group.
Ankara threatened last month to conduct a ground military operation to take control of this region and establish a 30 km wide “security zone” along its southern border.
The PKK has claimed responsibility for several bomb attacks against official buildings, military bases and police stations in recent years, particularly in southeastern Turkey.