Car bomb rocks southeast Turkey after pro-Kurd MPs arrested

At least eight people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a car bomb attack which rocked southeastern Turkey's largest city on Friday, hours after police detained the leaders of the pro-Kurd HDP party.

The blast struck near a police station in Diyarbakir where some of the party leaders were being held in a terrorism probe. It tore off the facades of buildings and firefighters were searching debris for people trapped there.

Turkey's justice minister, Bekir Bozdag, said police and civilians were killed, while the prime minister, Binali Yildirim, said the death toll included one member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

There are conflicting accounts over who committed the attack. The Islamic State group's Amaq news agency claimed responsibility while Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the PKK had showed its "ugly face" with the attack.

Southeastern Turkey has been rocked by political turmoil and violence for more than a year after the collapse of a ceasefire with the PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency for Kurdish autonomy and greater representation.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party accuse the HDP of links to the PKK, which is deemed a terrorist organisation by Ankara, as well as the US and EU.

The HDP, which won more than five million votes at the last general election, denies direct links.

The government introduced a nationwide state of emergency after a failed military coup on 15 July which gave it broad powers to round up suspects linked to the putsch.

More than 110,000 civil servants, soldiers, police, judges, journalists and other officials have been suspended or detained.

The authorities have also used the emergency powers to round up pro-Kurdish opposition politicians, including Diyarbakir's joint mayors, who were arrested late last month, and has closed all major Kurdish media organisations.