Prime Minister Binali Yildirim blamed the attack on the “killer PKK”, referring to the outlawed rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party. “We will fight them both in urban centres and rural areas with determination,” he vowed.
Turkey remains on high alert after multiple attacks on its soil that have killed well over 200 people in the past year and have been blamed on, or claimed by, Kurdish militants and Islamic State (IS) jihadists.
Images carried by Turkish media showed a massive plume of black smoke rising from the rubble of the severely damaged police station in the town of Midyat near the Syrian border.
The windows of houses in the neighbourhood were shattered by the force of the blast.Yildirim said one police officer and two civilians have been confirmed dead so far while 30 people were injured.
The police station blast comes a day after a bombing in the heart of Istanbul killed 11 people, including several police, the latest in a spate of attacks in Turkey’s largest city.
The government on Wednesday put the toll at six officers and five civilians. There was no claim of responsibility for the Istanbul bombing but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan too suggested that Kurdish militants were behind it.