Alwaght- A car bomb has rocked the center of Turkey’s southeastern city of Diyarbakir, and killed at least eight person and wounded dozens more.
The blast followed the overnight arrests of 11 lawmakers from the Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP), whose base is largely drawn from Kurds in the region, highlighting tensions between Ankara’s forces and Kurdish militants.
Turkish media reported that ambulances were dispatched to the site of the blast near a police station, which wounded around 100 people, in the city’s Baglar district around 8am on Friday morning.
In a statement following the incident, the office of Diyarbakir’s provincial governor said the explosion was caused by a car bomb, adding that militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are believed to have been behind the attack.
In the early hours of the day, Turkish security forces detained two co-leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) along with nine other lawmakers from the second-biggest opposition bloc in parliament.
Selahattin Demirtas was arrest at his home in Diyarbakir and Figen Yuksekdag at her residence in the capital, Ankara, as “part of an ongoing counter-terrorism investigation.”
Following the overnights arrests of the opposition figures, reports emerged of restrictions on nationwide access to online social media and messaging services, including WhatsApp.
Tensions have been running high in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated southeast since a ceasefire declared by the PKK collapsed in 2015 in the wake of Ankara’s military operations against the Kurdish group’s positions both inside the country as well as northern Iraq.
