Turkish police officers killed in Diyarbakir bomb blast

Seven Turkish police officers were killed and at least 27 people wounded on Thursday in a bomb attack on their vehicle in the Kurdish-majority southeastern city of Diyarbakir that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned should show the world the "true face" of terror in the country.

The attack blamed on Kurdish militants took place on the eve of a rare visit by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has waged a relentless campaign against Kurdish rebels since last summer, to central Diyarbakir on Friday.

A regional security source told AFP a remotely-operated car bomb went off as a police vehicle drove past the city's main bus terminal. Of the 27 wounded, 14 were civilians and 13 police.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but Turkey has been shaken in recent weeks by a number of attacks both claimed by Kurdish militants and blamed on the Islamic State (IS) group.

Video footage from a nearby balcony showed security forces and ambulances heading to the scene.

Speaking during a visit to Washington, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said: "We cannot tolerate this anymore. European countries and other countries, I hope they can see the true face of terrorists in these attacks."

Turkey's southeast has been the site of intense violence since the collapse of a ceasefire between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in July 2015.

On Monday, Erdogan announced that 5,359 Kurdish militants had been killed in security operations since last July, when the ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish state collapsed.

Air strikes and other operations have been carried out against suspected Kurdish militants in southeast Turkey and the PKK headquarters in the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq.

He also said that about 335 security officials and 285 civilians had been killed in the same period.

“We made this territory our country with the blood of our martyrs over a thousand years," he said in a speech addressing commanders-in-chief and military officers at the Turkish War Colleges in Istanbul.

"If we are to continue living here, we have to pay its price."

Violence has continued in Turkey's restive southeast, which has seen the construction of checkpoints, roadblocks and the imposition of curfews.

Three soldiers were wounded on Monday after Kurdish militants detonated an improvised explosive device they had buried in the road as a service shuttle passed carrying soldiers between the towns of Siverek and Viransehir.

Over the weekend, 32 Kurdish militants, as well as three soldiers and a policeman, were also killed in the southeastern province of Mardin.