Suspected Isis suicide bomber kills two police, injures 18 in Turkey

Suspected Islamic State militant kills two police officials, injures several after blowing himself up in front of police headquarters in Gaziantep, Turkey

 Police officers secure the area after a vehicle laden with explosives exploded in front of police headquarters in Gaziantep, Turkey
Police officers secure the area after a vehicle laden with explosives exploded in front of police headquarters in Gaziantep, Turkey

Two police officers were killed and 23 people wounded in a suicide car bomb attack on police headquarters in the south-eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep, in one of two attacks on security forces on Sunday.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Turkish media reported on Sunday that police had identified at least one of the attackers as Ismail Günes, who is said to have been an Islamic State militant. His father, Süleyman Günes, was detained for questioning.

The suspect is believed to have detonated a bomb-laden vehicle just outside the gates of police headquarters on a street housing several other provincial government buildings whose windows were smashed.

"The father of a suspect who is believed to have carried out the attack has been detained. We have records of the suspect's links with Islamic State," a security source told Reuters.

The daily Hürriyet newspaper reported that the attackers first opened fire on the police from a car before a second vehicle carrying explosives was detonated in front of the police headquarters building. One of the cars is said to have escaped, and security forces have begun a search for the vehicle involved in the attack.

A Turkish flag was hung on the side of the police headquarters building. Many shops were severely damaged. Shopkeepers and municipality workers cleaned streets covered with rubble strewn by the blast felt across the city.

Police, who cordoned off the area and increased security measures across the city, removed the pieces of a wrecked vehicle and collected body parts thought to be belonging to the perpetrator from the scene.

Nineteen police officers and four civilians were wounded in the attack, a statement from Gaziantep governor Ali Yerlikaya's office said. One police officer died at the scene and a second in hospital.

Several hundred miles eastwards along the same border, in the town of Nusaybin, three Turkish soldiers were killed and 14 others wounded in an armed attack by Kurdish militants, an army statement said.

Turkey is facing security threats on several fronts. As part of a U.S.-led coalition, it is fighting Islamic State in neighboring Syria and Iraq and battling Kurdish PKK militants in its southeast, where a 2-1/2-year ceasefire collapsed last July, triggering the worst violence since the 1990s.

The province of Gaziantep, bordering Islamic State-held Syrian territory, is home to a large Syrian refugee population and there have been several police raids on suspected Islamic State militants there over the past months.

A wave of suicide bombings this year, including two in its largest city Istanbul, have been blamed on Islamic State, and two in the capital Ankara were claimed by a Kurdish militant group. The Sunni hardline group, which usually claims responsibility for its attacks has never done so in Turkey.

The Gaziantep attack came just four days after a female suicide bomber injured several people outside the grand mosque in Bursa, Turkey’s fourth-largest city.