Turkey: many injured by a bomb against a police vehicle in Diyarbakir

Security check on the Silvan road, not far from Dyarbakir, (file photo).

REUTERS/Sertac Kayar

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Nine people including eight police officers were injured this Friday, December 16 in Turkey in the explosion of a bomb at the passage of a police vehicle near Diyarbakir, the main city in the south-east with a Kurdish majority.

Five people were taken into custody.

The attack has not been claimed but the authorities suspect Kurdish fighters, against whom the Turkish army is engaged in Iraq and Syria.

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With our correspondent in Istanbul,

The bomb was hidden in a car parked on the side of the road.

According to the Minister of the Interior, the explosives were detonated remotely, when a police van passed.

It was 5:10 am and it was still dark on this road linking Diyarbakir to Mardin, a town located about twenty kilometers as the crow flies from the Syrian border.

The Kurds responsible?

The attack did not cause any serious injuries, but it made an impression because it was the first in five years near

It comes in a particularly tense context between

whom the Minister of the Interior, Süleyman Soylu, quickly designated as the main suspects.

According to the minister, one of those arrested admitted having parked the car bomb.

A member of his sibling who had joined the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, was reportedly killed in 2004.

The attack comes after a series of air raids by the Turkish army against the PKK in northern Iraq and against its Syrian offshoot, the YPG.

President Erdogan has threatened in recent weeks to conduct a new ground military operation in northern Syria.

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• Turkey

• Kurds

• Syria