Pair of car bombs rock Turkey's east

Turkey's private Dogan news agency reported Thursday that a roadside bomb in the southeastern province of Bitlis killed at least three soldiers and wounded six.

That attack came just hours after a deadly blast in the eastern city of Elazig caused extensive damage to the facade of a police station and killed three officers. Another 170 people were wounded.

Mahmut Varol, the deputy mayor of Elazig, told Haber Turk television that the explosion occurred on the grounds of the police headquarters. Cars parked nearby also caught fire, he said, and at least three people were killed and more than 50 wounded.

Turkey was already reeling from a deadly attack hours earlier when a car bomb killed at least three people and wounded scores in the southeastern city of Van, bringing the total death toll to at least nine.

All three attacks are suspected to be the work of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been battling the Turkish state for political autonomy and language rights for the country's Kurdish minority since the 1980s.

The mainly Kurdish southeast has been scorched by violence since a two-and-a-half-year ceasefire between the state and the PKK collapsed in July last year. Daily attacks on security forces by Kurdish insurgents have since erupted.

The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Turkey's crackdowns on the rebellious Kurdish minority continue with curfews, military assaults and police raids across the country. This week a court ordered the closure of the pro-Kurdish opposition newspaper "Ozgur Gundem," a move decried by Turkey's professional journalism association.

Prosecutors have also indicted leaders in the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) whom the government accuses of colluding with the PKK. The HDP has called for a return of the ceasefire and complains of rising authoritarianism in the country.

jar/tj (Reuters, AFP)