The Turkish defence 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 (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, injuring two police officers. A second assailant was killed in a shootout with police on Sunday, the interior minister said.
A news agency close to the PKK said the group has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing.The attack happened hours before Turkiye’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 in the bombing near an entrance to the Ministry of Interior Affairs, Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X. Assailants who arrived at the scene inside a light commercial vehicle carried out the attack, he said.
“Our fight against terrorism, their collaborators, the (drug) dealers, gangs, and organised crime organisations will continue with determination,” he said.
The interior minister did not say who was behind the attack. However, ANF News, a news agency close to the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, reported on Sunday night that the group had claimed responsibility for the blast.
Leftist extremists and the Islamic State group have also carried out deadly attacks throughout Turkiye 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.
The president reiterated his government’s aim to create a 30-km safe zone along Turkiye’s border with Syria to secure its southern border from attacks. Turkiye has launched several incursions into northern Syria since 2016 to drive away the Islamic State group and a Kurdish militia group, known by the initials YPG, and controls swaths of territory in the area. Turkiye views the YPG as an extension of the PKK, which is listed as a terror group by Turkiye, the United States, and the European Union. The PKK has waged an insurgency against Turkiye since 1984. Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict.
Last year, a bomb blast in a bustling pedestrian street in Istanbul left six people dead, including two children. More than 80 others were wounded. Turkiye blamed the attack on the PKK and the YPG.
The State-run Anadolu Agency reported that the two attackers on Sunday had seized the vehicle in the central province of Kayseri from a veterinarian.