ISTANBUL Initial findings suggest the Kurdish PKK militant group was behind a car bombing outside a courthouse in the western Turkish city of Izmir on Thursday which killed two people, provincial governor Erol Ayyildiz said.
“A clash erupted after our police officers wanted to stop a vehicle at a police check point in front of Bayrakli courthouse. In this clash, terrorists detonated the car bomb while trying to escape,” Ayyildiz told reporters in comments broadcast live.
A police officer and a courthouse employee were killed in the attack, he said. He also confirmed that police had shot dead two of the attackers, and said they were armed with Kalashnikov rifles and grenades.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Tuvan Gumrukcu and Ece Toksabay; Writing by Nick Tattersall)
