The Kurdish PKK has taken credit today for a major bombing that destroyed the three-storey police headquarters in the city of Cizre, in the nation’s far southeast, near the border with both Iraq and Syria. The bombing killed at least 11 people and wounded 78 others.
Details are still emerging on the casualties, and it is unclear how many were police and how many were civilians. The PKK confirmed the attack on the headquarters, but denied being behind the attempted assassination of an opposition figure earlier this week, saying they were not involved in that.
The attacker detonated a truckload of explosions at the checkpoint just 50 meters away from the headquarters, an explosion which totally gutted the station, leaving just a concrete shell. Surprisingly, the damage centered primarily on police headquarters itself, and there weren’t huge casualties in the surrounding area.
US officials issued a statement critical of the PKK, calling it “disturbing” that they were indiscriminately targeting security personnel in southeast Turkey. Turkey and the PKK have been fighting for 32 years over the latter’s secessionist ambitions.
