Two militants set off a bomb inside their car by a police headquarters in the central Turkish province of Kayseri today, killing themselves and one policeman and wounding 18 others, Turkey's interior minister said.
Kurdish separatists, Islamist militants - including al-Qaeda - as well as groups on the far left and right have all carried
out bomb attacks in Turkey, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility for that attack.
Turkish Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said security forces had followed the car from Goksun district in Kahramanmaras province to Pinarbasi - about 100km after it passed a checkpoint in the road without stopping. Police opened fire as it passed the police headquarters in
the town of Pinarbasi and the bomb went off, Mr Sahin said.
Pinarbasi lies east of the city of Kayseri, which is about 325km southeast of the capital Ankara. It was not immediately clear why police did not stop the car sooner, and Mr Sahin said investigators did not think, as yet, that the target was the police station.
"From what can be seen inside the vehicle, there are two suicide bomber militants inside," he told reporters from the Aegean city of Izmir."We were not expecting the terror organisation to stop. We have seen how they continue to carry out crazy acts," Mr Sahin said, using a common term to describe the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who are waging a war against the state.
He said one policeman had been killed in the explosion and that 18 others had been wounded, eight of them seriously.
Turkish media earlier reported that the car had tried to drive into the police station moments before the blast and that security forces were hunting for a third militant who had managed to escape.
Bomb attacks in Kayseri are almost unheard of with most raids occurring further east in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, although militants have carried out isolated attacks in Ankara and western cities.
PKK guerillas vowed to step up their fight against the Turkish state last year and have launched a series of attacks against Turkish security forces, killing scores of people.
Speaking hours after the blast, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan vowed to continue fighting the PKK."The fight against the separatist terror organisation will continue with determination, as it has until now. I wish health to those who are wounded, and God's mercy for our martyrs," he told reporters in Ankara.
More than 40,000 people have been killed in the PKK insurgency since the group took up arms against the state in 1984.
Reuters