Explosion hits Viransehir in Turkey’s southeast

A three-year-old child has been killed and 15 people have been wounded in a car bomb attack in a town in southeastern Turkey, near the border with Syria, according to the provincial governor and hospital sources.

Friday’s explosion occurred near the lodgings of judges and prosecutors in Viransehir in Sanliurfa province, Gungor Azim Tuna was quoted by Turkey’s Anadolu news agency as saying.

The dead child was the son of a court worker, he said, adding that the wounded were taken to hospital but were not believed to have any serious injuries.

Tuna said the blast was a “terror attack” caused by a parked vehicle that was loaded with explosives and detonated using a remote control.

Bekir Bozdag, Turkey’s justice minister, said on Twitter that no attack would weaken the country’s fight against “terror”.

“Our determined and effective fight against terror will continue,” he said.

No group immediately claimed the attack, and Bozdag did not say which organisation the government suspected.

Turkey was hit by a series of attacks in 2016 blamed on Kurdish fighters and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, killing hundreds of people.

The current year also had a deadly start, with a New Year’s attack on an Istanbul nightclub which left 39 people dead, most of them foreigners.

The attack was claimed by ISIL, also known as ISIS.