The terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has claimed responsibility for an attack on Tuesday in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır that took the lives of one police officer and two civilians.
Turkey’s Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, who initially ruled out the possibility of a terror attack when the explosion took place at a police compound in Diyarbakır’s Bağlar district, said on Thursday that the explosion was a terror attack.
Soylu told private broadcaster Habertürk on Thursday that the attack was staged through a tunnel dug from outside and loaded with explosives.
In an earlier statement, the Diyarbakır Governor’s Office stated that the explosion had occurred during the repair of a police panzer in an outbuilding at police headquarters in Bağlar.
In another statement on Thursday, the governor’s office said one ton of explosives was used in the attack, adding that a total of 177 people have been detained in connection with it.
Four people who were injured in the attack continue to be hospitalized.
The police building was the scene of an outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) car bomb attack on Nov. 4, 2016, that killed nine people and injured over 100.
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.