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2 police killed in car bomb attack in southeastern Turkey

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AP Ankara
Kurdish rebels today detonated a car bomb near a police station in southeastern Turkey, killing two police officers and wounding some 35 people, officials said.

The attack targeted the traffic police station and lodgings in the town of Nusaybin, bordering Syria, where the security forces are battling militants linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

A fragile two-year-old peace process between Turkey's government and the PKK collapsed in July, reviving a three-decades-old conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people. Hundreds many of them police and soldiers have died in the renewed fighting.

The governor's office for Mardin province, where Nusaybin is located, said the explosion wounded 35 people, most of them police or police family members. Four of them were being operated on, although their injuries were not life-threatening condition.
 

The explosion caused extensive damage to the police lodgings and left a large crater in the road, images published by the private Dogan news agency showed.

The PKK, considered a terror organization by Turkey and its allies, is fighting for autonomy in Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast.

The attack in Nusaybin comes amid a surge of violence in Turkey.

Last month, a suicide car bombing that targeted buses carrying military personnel in the capital, Ankara, killed 29 people. A Kurdish militant group that is an offshoot of the PKK claimed responsibility for that attack.

Yesterday, police in Istanbul killed two women militants of the banned far-left group, the Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front, or DHKP-C, who had hidden inside a building after attacking police with gunfire and a hand grenade.

Some 145 people have died since July in three separate suicide bomb attacks that authorities have blamed on the Islamic State group, including 12 German tourists who were killed in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district on January 12.

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First Published: Mar 04 2016 | 4:22 PM IST

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