Nine dead in blast in southeastern Turkey

Nine people have been killed and more than 100 wounded in a huge explosion in central Diyarbakir, a city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said two police officers and seven civilians were killed in Friday blast.

The Diyarbakir governor’s office said a car bomb went off at about 8am local time (5:00 GMT), adding the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) had claimed responsibility. 

Turkey arrests pro-Kurdish opposition leaders

Al Jazeera’s Kadir Konuksever, reporting from Diyarbakir, said an annex to the police headquarters had been targeted. “Four other civilian buildings are heavily damaged,” he said. 

The explosion happened hours after police arrested 12 MPs from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party.

The government has stepped up a military campaign in the troubled southeast to eradicate PKK fighters, who have launched almost daily attacks since the rupture of a fragile ceasefire last year.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the PKK first took up arms in 1984, with the aim of carving out an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.