A huge car bomb exploded Thursday near a military base in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, killing five people, hospital officials said.
Some 70 others were hurt in the blast which occurred as a military vehicle was passing on a road in the city centre, some 100 metres from a military base and billets, governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu told reporters , according to AFP. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the US embassy in Ankara condemned the blast as a "terrorist act."
Two of the five victims were high school students attending private lessons at a nearby building.
The blast destroyed the military vehicle and five cars and ignited a large blaze later extinguished by firefighters. The car bomb was set off by remote control, governor Mutlu.
Several of the injured were badly wounded. Those hurt included some 30 troops as well as civilians and high school students, officials said. "Terrorism has reared its ugly head again. But these incidents will not affect our determination to fight terrorism both at home and abroad," Erdogan said in Ankara in televised remarks.
The Kurdish PKK group has recently threatened retaliation following Turkish air strikes on its bases in neighbouring northern Iraq, conducted with US intelligence assistance.
