A suspected suicide bomber in south-east Turkey killed two people and wounded around a dozen others in Bingol, a town in the mainly Kurdish region on Saturday, police said. The blast occurred at a tea house close to the office of the ruling AK Party at around 1.20 pm (1020 GMT), Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin told a news conference.
Police said the suspected suicide bomber was a woman. Turkey is fighting a long-running separatist insurgency in the south-east, and the blast comes as the government is trying to provide relief to thousands of people rendered homeless by a powerful earthquake in Van, another largely Kurdish province.
Sahin was addressing a news conference in Van, where he is part of the team overseeing relief work. Meanwhile, police clashed with scores of stone-throwing youths in Diyarbakir, the main city in the south-east. The military mounted operations more than a week ago against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants on the border with northern Iraq, after 24 soldiers were killed in simultaneous attacks on their posts in Hakkari, the most south-easterly province. The PKK has carried out suicide attacks in south-east Turkey during its armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule, but splinter groups have often claimed responsibility for such attacks in recent years.