UPDATES WITH CASUALTY NUMBERS, FRESH STATEMENT FROM GOVERNOR’S OFFICE
By Sema Kaplan
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (AA) - One person was killed in a vehicle bomb attack on a police station in the largest city in southeast Turkey on Friday, a police official said.
Thirty others were injured in an explosion on a police facility that Diyarbakir provincial governor’s office said was caused by the PKK terrorist group.
The blast struck a building used by riot police officers in Baglar, a district in the center of Diyarbakir province, at 7.53 a.m. local time (0453GMT), the governor’s office said in a statement.
The area of the attack is heavily populated and civilians, particularly students, would have been in the vicinity, the statement added.
The explosion damaged nearby cars and premises. Fire engines and ambulances rushed to the area following the detonation and the government imposed a broadcast ban, as is usual in the aftermath of terrorist incidents.
The attack followed the arrests earlier Friday of 11 lawmakers from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), including the party’s two co-leaders Figen Yuksekdag and Selahattin Demirtas and parliamentary group leader Idris Baluken. A 12th HDP lawmaker was arrested later.
The government has accused the HDP of links to the PKK terrorist group. The deputies were arrested for failing to answer a summons to testify as part of a counter-terrorism investigation, a security source said.
The deputies face prosecution under anti-terrorism laws after their parliamentary immunity was lifted earlier this year, along with other lawmakers from Turkey’s main political parties. Unlike deputies from other parties, the HDP lawmakers had refused to appear to testify.
Both the police and security sources spoke to Anadolu Agency on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to the media.
The PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and EU -- resumed its decades-old armed campaign in July last year. Since then, more than 700 security force members have been martyred and around 8,000 PKK terrorists killed or apprehended.