Deadly car bombing destroys Turkish police headquarters

At least six people were killed and over 140 injured on Thursday when a car bomb attack hit a police headquarters in eastern Turkey, a local security source said.

A second attack less than two hours later targeted a military convoy in the southeastern city of Bildis, killing three soldiers and a guard.

A total of over 200 people have been wounded in the two attacks, which have both been blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The first explosion happened in the garden of a four-storey police headquarters in Elazig.

Images on Turkish television showed severe damage to the building, with a large plume of black smoke rising from the headquarters.

Elazig is a conservative nationalist bastion and had until now avoided much of the violence that has struck the restive Kurdish-dominated southeast over recent months.

Isik blamed the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for the attack, speaking in an interview with the state-run Anadolu news agency.

"We will thwart the PKK like we thwarted FETO," he said, referring to Fethullah Gulen who Ankara blames for the attempted coup last month.

The second attack killed four people and injured six others, with a handmade bomb used to target a moving convoy. 

The PKK has kept up its assaults in recent weeks after the unsuccessful 15 July coup by rogue elements in the military aimed at unseating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A Turkish government source told AFP on Thursday that the PKK is taking "advantage of the current atmosphere in Turkey" to launch a fresh wave of attacks.

Eight people - five police and three civilians - were killed on Monday in a PKK car bomb attack on a police traffic control building on a highway leading southeast from Diyarbakir.

Two policemen and a civilian were killed in an attack on Wednesday night in Van, another city in the east.

Turkey has seen a major uptick in violence since last July, when a ceasefire between the Turkish state and the PKK broke down.

Police and the military have launched major operations in the east, locking down entire Kurdish-majority towns, while PKK militants have launched multiple bombings, mostly targeting police but also causing civilian injuries.