3 killed, 73 injured in terror attack in eastern Turkey

VAN, Turkey

A terror attack in eastern Turkey has claimed three lives and injured more than 70 people.

Three people, including a police officer, are among the dead. Seventy-three people, including 20 police officers, were also injured late Wednesday in a bomb blast which hit the eastern city of Van, local authorities told Anadolu Agency.

Van Governor Ibrahim Tasyapan said PKK terrorists detonated a car bomb near a police station in the city’s Ipekyolu district shortly after 11 p.m. [2000 GMT] local time.

Tasyapan said one suspect was caught during an operation launched after the attack, and confirmed that many buildings in the area were damaged.

Provincial head of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, Zahir Soganda, said: "The people of Van will not be discouraged by this incident.

"These are the last stands by the terror organization. They are trying to break the resistance of the people of Van, which they will never achieve."

Security operations are continuing.

Separately, two police officers were injured in an attack by the PKK terrorist organization in southeastern Turkey's Hakkari province early Thursday, a security source said.

The source, who spoke on condition of confidentiality due to restrictions on talking to the media, told Anadolu Agency the officers were wounded when PKK terrorists opened fire on the police headquarters in the province’s Semdinli district.

An operation to arrest the terrorists remains underway in the region.

The PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU – resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.

Since then, more than 600 security personnel have been martyred and more than 7,000 PKK terrorists have been killed.

(Reporting by Necat Hazar, Sirac Karadeniz and Yilmaz Kazandioglu : Writing by Sibel Ugurlu, Satuk Bugra Kutlugun)