Vehicle bomb attack kills 18 at Turkish military checkpoint
- by Virginia Carter
- in World Media
- — Oct 11, 2016
Since then, PKK terrorist attacks have martyred more than 600 security personnel and also claimed the lives of numerous civilians, including women and children, while more than 7,000 PKK terrorists have been killed in army operations.
In response to Sunday's attack on the Hakkâri province, Turkey immediately launched a military operation against the rebels.
The Iraqi government blamed the Kurdish Workers Party, the PKK, for the attack.
It said 88 members of the Turkish security forces had been killed and 152 wounded during the same period.
The governor of the province Cuneyit Orhan Toprak said the attackers had first opened fire on the soldiers at the checkpoint to distract them before driving a minivan and detonating it.
A bomb in the vehicle was detonated, which Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters contained some five tonnes of explosives.
The group is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. In the course of the 32-year-old insurgency, PKK attacks have conventionally dwindled in the winter months when the militants seek shelter due to harsh conditions in the mountainous southeastern region.
Over the past 15 months, attacks on the Turkish security forces have continued on an nearly daily basis as the government has pressed military operations against the PKK to rid urban areas of fighters. The attack was the deadliest in Turkey.
Turkish security forces have killed 417 Kurdish militants since late August, the army said on Monday, a day after a truck bomb attack on a military checkpoint in southeast Turkey killed 18 people.
Hakkari is a flashpoint in the renewed conflict. Two days later, two suspected PKK militants blew themselves up near Ankara in a stand-off with police.
The attack also took place a day before the year anniversary of the bloodiest attack in Turkey's modern history when 103 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in twin suicide bombings targeting a pro-Kurdish peace rally in the capital, Ankara.
