Villagers search for the bodies of Turkish soldiers inside a destroyed armored vehicle near Dağlıca district, southeastern Turkey, on September 7, 2015. (AFP)
Three Turkish police forces and a civilian have been killed in two roadside bomb attacks blamed on Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in the country’s southeast.
The explosive, planted under a bridge on Şemdinli-Yüksekova highway in the Şemdinli district of Hakkâri province, detonated on Tuesday afternoon while an army vehicle was passing, Turkey’s English-language news website Bugun cited a statement released by the General Staff of Turkey.
Three more soldiers also sustained injuries in the incident and were taken to a hospital, the statement further said.
Elsewhere in the province of Batman, a similar attack claimed the lives of a police officer and a truck driver and wounded three other policemen.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday that over 30 PKK militants had been killed in an overnight cross-border offensive by the country’s army.
Ankara launched an operation against PKK militants in the country and in neighboring Iraq in July. A shaky ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 was declared as null and void following the Turkish military campaign.
Erdogan has vowed to eliminate the outlawed PKK, which has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s The conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead.