Car bomb in southeast Turkey wounds eight police officers

Car bomb in southeast Turkey wounds eight police officers
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A bomb went off in a vehicle parked roadside in southeastern city of Diyarbakir and lightly injured eight police officers whose service bus was toppled after the explosion. A civilian was also hurt.

Eight Turkish police officers were wounded on Friday when a bomb exploded in a roadside vehicle while their armored bus passed on a highway in Turkey’s southeastern province of Diyarbakir, as Turkey reeled from a bombing attack on Istanbul’s Istiklal avenue last month which killed six and wounded dozens of people.

Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said two people had been detained and were believed to be the perpetrators of the blast, but there were no immediate claim of responsibility.

"There was an explosion in a parked vehicle at 05:10 a.m. local time as a police vehicle was going to work in Diyarbakir," he said.

The blast occurred near a livestock market some 10 km (6 miles) south of the centre of Diyarbakir, the largest city in the region, making the bus topple.

The Diyarbakir governor's office said the bomb had not critically hurt anyone, but nine people who had been in the bus had been taken to hospital for checkups.

“Seven of them have already been discharged from the hospital,” Diyarbakir Governor Ali İhsan Sari said.

On November 13, a bomb killed six people and wounded dozens in Turkey's largest city.

Turkey blamed Kurdish militants for that blast, but no group claimed responsibility then, either. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) denied involvement.

The PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, largely focused in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.