Turkey’s car bomb blast kills child in Sanliurfa province: governor

A child was killed and at least 15 people injured in a large car bomb blast in a town in southern Turkey, a regional governor says.

The explosion targeted a building housing judges and prosecutors in Viransehir, in Sanliurfa province, which borders Syria.

Provincial governor Gungor Azim Tuna told the state news agency Anadolu that a child aged three had been killed.

Turkish cities and towns have been hit by several attacks in the past year.

Anadolu quoted Tuna as saying that the bomb, which exploded at 20:45 local time (17:45 GMT), was detonated by remote control, after a man in his late teens or early 20s had left the car.

The child who died in the blast was the son of a court clerk, Tuna said.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag condemned the attack which he said had specifically targeted the judiciary. He said it would not deter judges from doing their job.

The explosion shattered windows in nearby buildings and could be heard or seen throughout the town, witnesses said.

So far no group has said it was behind the blast but Turkey has suffered a number of attacks attributed to Kurdish militants and so-called Islamic State (ISIS). Hundreds of people have been killed.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which launched an armed struggle against the Turkish government in 1984 to push for an independent Kurdish state, has been labelled as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and its allies in the West.

Fighting flared up again after a two-year-old ceasefire ended in July 2015.

In August last year, a police officer in Viransehir, a mainly Kurdish and Arab town, died in an explosion also said to have been triggered by remote control.

And in May last year, police in the town shot dead four men who officials suspected were members of the PKK.

The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper said that they had been planning to bomb a government building.

Source: BBC