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Terrorist PKK kills five police, three civilians in Bitlis attack
Bitlis Governor Nurettin Yılmaz told reporters following the blast that a remotely controlled bomb was detonated while a police vehicle was passing by and killed eight people.
Yılmaz earlier said four people were injured during the blast and the wounded people were taken to Bitlis State Hospital. However, one of the injured passed away in the hospital. He added that large-scale air and ground operations have been launched in the area.
The blast took place in the Güroymak district of Bitlis province in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. Two police officers who were injured are reportedly in critical condition.
A senior member of the PKK, Bahoz Erdal of Syria, has recently been reported to have ordered the group's militants to avenge the destruction of a key PKK camp by Turkish security forces. The Turkish military brought down a PKK camp located in Kavaklı, just 30 kilometers from the provincial center of Turkey's southeastern Hakkari province last week. The camp was a key base for the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), the organization controlling the PKK and affiliated groups, both logistically and strategically.
Radio communications between terrorists intercepted by Turkish intelligence officers indicated that Erdal ordered an escalation of attacks on military and police targets as well as on civilians. The Bitlis incident is not the first in which civilians had been killed by the PKK. Nearly 20 civilians have been killed and dozens of others were injured over the past few months in terrorist attacks carried out by the PKK, which has recently stepped up its attacks. The killing of four women in Siirt last month led to outrage across the country, including the country's predominantly Kurdish Southeast, with the public calling on the PKK to end its attacks.
Also last month, the PKK opened fire on civilians and police in Batman, killing eight-month-pregnant Mizgin Doru (35) and her 6-year-old daughter, Sultan Doru. Doru's husband, her 8-year-old daughter and three police officers were injured in the attack, while three terrorists were also killed. The woman's unborn baby was saved via C-section, but later died in the hospital on Wednesday, bringing the death toll in this attack to three.
In the face of intensified terrorist attacks targeting civilians, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has recently called on Turkey's Kurds to rise up against the terrorist PKK, which he called cruel for attacking mosques and killing civilians.
Turkey has this year carried out scores of air raids and artillery strikes on northern Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish area and also in southeastern Turkey against PKK targets. Ankara has warned it could carry out a cross-border ground attack, depending on talks with Iraq. Recently, Parliament passed a bill extending permission, as it has done several times since 2007, for the Turkish military to mount cross-border operations against members of the PKK in northern Iraq during the coming year.
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