ANKARA — The Turkish defense ministry says its warplanes have carried out raids on suspected Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq on Sunday following a suicide attack on a government building in the Turkish capital.
A ministry statement said some 20 targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, were “destroyed” in the aerial operation, including caves, shelters and depots.
Earlier, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device near an entrance of the Ministry of Interior Affairs. A second assailant was killed in a shootout with police Sunday, the interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, said.
ANF News, a news agency close to the PKK, said the group has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing.
The attack happened hours before Turkey’s parliament was set to reopen after its three-month summer recess with an address by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Two police officers were slightly wounded, Yerlikaya said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Assailants who arrived at the scene inside a light commercial vehicle carried out the attack, he said.
“Our heroic police officers, through their intuition, resisted the terrorists as soon as they got out of the vehicle,” Yerlikaya later told reporters. “One of them blew himself up, while the other one was shot in the head before he had a chance to blow himself up.”
“Our fight against terrorism, their collaborators, the (drug) dealers, gangs and organized crime organizations will continue with determination,” he said.
The interior minister did not say who was behind the attack.
Leftist extremists and the Islamic State group have also carried out deadly attacks throughout Turkey in the past.
Erdogan gave his speech in parliament as planned and called the attack “the last stand of terrorism.”
“The scoundrels who targeted the peace and security of the citizens could not achieve their goals and they never will,” he said.
Source : VOA News