18 soldiers killed in PKK car bomb in southeast Turkey

A total of 18 people were killed in a car bomb in southeastern Turkey on Sunday, among them eight civilians, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. “The attack was perpetrated by a suicide bomber who detonated a van with five tons of explosives,” Yildirim said.

Earlier reports put the toll at nine dead.

Another 26 people - 10 soldiers and 16 civilians - were injured in the blast in Hakkari province which was blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the official news agency Anadolu said.

The Anadolu Agency, citing a statement by the Turkish Armed Forces, said the attack occurred at 9:45 am outside a Gendarmerie checkpoint on the Semdinli-Yuksekova highway and was the work of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. 

Turkey has been rocked by a wave of bomb attacks since last summer that have killed hundreds of people and been blamed on either the PKK or the Islamic State group. On Thursday, 10 people were slightly wounded by a bomb mounted on a motorcycle that exploded near a police station in Istanbul.