11 Turkish police killed in PKK suicide bombing

Istanbul, Aug 26 (AFP) The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’Party (PKK) today claimed a suicide truck bombing on a policebuilding in Turkey’s southeast that killed 11 officers andwounded dozens more. The blast came two days after the Turkish army launched anoffensive in Syria that the government says is targeting bothIslamic State (IS) jihadists and a Syrian Kurdish militiadetested by Ankara. The explosion tore the facade off the headquarters of theTurkish riot police in the town of Cizre, a bastion of PKKsupport just north of the Syrian border. The local governor’s office said 11 officers were killedand 78 people injured, three of them civilians. Four peoplewere said to be in critical condition. The state-run Anadolu news agency said the explosion tookplace 50 metres (yards) from the building, at a control post. The PKK said it carried out the assault in retaliation forthe "continued isolation" of the group’s jailed leaderAbdullah Ocalan and the "lack of information" about hiswelfare. Cizre, a majority Kurdish town, has been badly hit byrenewed violence between the PKK and government forces sincethe collapse of a ceasefire last year. Turkish security forces have been hit by near daily PKKattacks since a two-and-a-half year truce ended in July 2015,leaving hundreds of police officers and soldiers dead. Turkey’s operation in Syria aims to push both IS and theKurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia that isfighting the jihadists out of the border area. Ankara considers the YPG, which has links to the PKK, as aterror group bent on carving out an autonomous Kurdish region. Speaking during the inauguration of a new bridge over theBosphorus in Istanbul Friday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogansaid the Cizre attack showed Turkey was "right to keep theoperation in Syria broad to include all terroristorganisations". Western media have suggested he is more intent onpreventing Syrian Kurds joining up areas under their controlthan fighting IS. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim rejected the allegations. "They either know nothing about the world or else theirjob is to report a bare-faced lie," he told a press conferencewith his Bulgarian counterpart. Ankara’s hostility to the Syrian Kurdish fighters has putit at odds with its NATO ally, the United States, whichsupports the YPG militia in the fight against IS. (AFP)SUA