Suspected PKK attack kills six in Diyarbakir

CINAR, Turkey (K24) -- A truck bomb and missile attack on a Turkish police station and living quarters above killed six people, five of whom were civilians, in the Kurdish town of Cinar, Diyarbakir.

The late Wednesday night explosions also wounded 40.

Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, condemned and blamed the Cinar (read Chenaar) attack on the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and said of the 40 wounded, 34 were civilians, and six were police officers.

PKK has not claimed or denied any responsibility yet.

Given the choice of the target, the attack is speculated to be in response to weeks-long curfews by Turkish authorities in several towns across the Kurdish region.

Ongoing intense clashes between the army and the PKK-affiliates in centers including Diyarbakir's central Sur district, Cizre, and Silopi in Sirnak province have caused hundreds of deaths, among them more than 150 civilians.

A K24 correspondent at the scene in Cinar, cordoned off by Turkish police, reported the attack killed a police officer named Senol Ciftci (28), his wife, and their four-years-old daughter.

Civilians Lokman Acikgoz, his five-years-old son Sadik, and one-year-old daughter Ecrin also died. Their bodies were retrieved from the rubbles of their demolished house next to the police station.

After the bombing, a one-hour-long clash took place between the attackers and the Turkish police supported by the gendarmerie. No casualties were reported in the aftermath.

Images aired on K24 TV showed a complete destruction of the outer walls of the front of the four-stories high station building, a burnt-down rooftop, and shattered windows of the nearby apartments.

Dozens of ambulances carried the wounded from Cinar all night to the city of Diyarbakir, some 30 kilometers north, the correspondent said.

He pointed out that buildings located a kilometer and a half surrounding the epicenter of the explosion were damaged, including a mosque and an elementary school.

The police arrested two people in relation to the attack, he reported.

The K24 reporter further added that the buildings of the local branch of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions' Party (DBP), and Kurdi-Der, a civic Kurdish language association in Cinar were set on fire overnight by unknown assailants.

The Kurdish Firat News Agency claimed on Thursday that plainclothes Turkish police committed the arson attack that left the buildings unusable.

Meanwhile, K24 Diyarbakir bureau reported that separate attacks took place elsewhere throughout the night.

A Turkish military outpost just outside the city of Midyat in Mardin province came under fire from mortar shells and long-range guns.

In a separate incident, a road bomb that went off in the formerly-curfew-hit town of Nusaybin, along the Syrian border, killed a civilian.

In Ankara, the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) spokesperson, Ayhan Bilgen, distanced his party from the deadly attack in Cinar but fell short of condemning it.

Bilgen called for peace and urged politicians to "take the lead in their responsibility" to stop the bloodshed.

(Hesen Kako reported from Cinar. Adnan Gerger contributed to this report from Ankara)