Eighteen people including 10 Turkish soldiers were killed, 27 others were injured when Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists attacked a military outpost in Şemdinli district of Hakkari with a bomb laden vehicle in Turkey’s southeast on Sunday, the Hakkari Governor’s Office has announced.
The attack took place in front of the Durak gendarmerie military outpost on Sunday morning.
The injured people, 11 of whom are soldiers, were taken to the nearby hospitals in the region, said the governor’s office in its statement.
According to media reports, the PKK used five tons of explosives in the attack, which caused a massive destruction in the area.
Turkish authorities had conducted direct talks with jailed PKK chief Abdullah Öcalan for several years until a truce in effect collapsed in the summer of 2015. Since then, there have been heavy clashes between the PKK and Turkish security forces.
More than 40,000 people, including 5,500 security force members, have been killed in four decades of fighting between the Turkish state and the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU.