Blast tears through police station in southeast Turkey

An explosion ripped through a police station in southeastern Turkey Friday morning, inflicting mass casualties, Turkish officials said.

At least 11 police officers were killed and 70 people injured in the incident in the town of Cizre, state media reported.

A car bomb reportedly detonated around 7:00 a.m. outside the police headquarters in the town of Cizre, not far from Turkey’s borders with Syria and Iraq, CNN Turk reported. Damage was caused to the building.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack which was the latest in a string of bombings that have targeted police or military vehicles and installations.

The official Anadolu news agency blamed the Kurdish Worker’s Party, or PKK, for the blast. Members of the PKK have carried out a string of car bomb attacks on police and military in recent months.

Violence between the PKK and the security forces resumed last year, after the collapse of a fragile peace process.

[mappress mapid=”5872″]

The latest attack on Turkish security forces came just two days after Ankara dispatched troops to northern Syria in a bid to help Syrian rebels root out the Islamic State from a town near the border and push back Syrian Kurdish rebel forces.

Turkey sent in tanks on Wednesday and by Thursday Turkish forces were securing the area around the town of Jarablus, Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said.

He said the Turkish-backed operation has two main goals — to secure the Turkish border area and to make sure the Kurdish Syrian forces “are not there.”