Car bomb attack kills six soldiers in southeast Turkey

Six Turkish soldiers were killed and seven people, including civilians, wounded on Sunday when a car bomb exploded near a police station in a border region of the country’s southeast, security sources said.

The sources said the blast hit the Durak gendarmerie station, 20 km (12 miles) from the town of Semdinli, in a mountainous part of Hakkari province near the border with Iraq and Iran, where Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants are active.

The privately-owned Dogan news agency said the explosion occurred during vehicle searches on the road in front of the police station.

The PKK, which launched a separatist insurgency in 1984, is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

A two-year ceasefire between the group and Turkish authorities collapsed in July last year and the violence subsequently flared to levels not seen since the height of the conflict in the 1990s.

Source: Reuters