Iylas Akengin, AFP | Turkish special force police officers walk at the site of a bomb attack in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, on March 31, 2016

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on Friday claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack a day earlier that killed seven police officers and wounded 27 people in southeast Turkey’s Diyarbakir city, a statement on the party's website said.

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A parked car laden with explosives was detonated by remote control on Thursday as a minibus carrying the police officers turned a corner on a busy street, security sources and officials said.

The attack, a day before Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s visit to the largely Kurdish southeast, is the latest in a string of car bombings during months of violence in the region.

President Tayyip Erdogan, who was on a visit to Washington for a nuclear security summit at the time of the blast, denounced the attack, saying it showed the “ugly face” of militants “as they are cornered”.

“This shows terrorism’s ugly face again. The determination of our security forces will, God willing, put an end [to it]”, Erdogan said in a speech to the Brookings Institute on Thursday.

He said 27 people had also been wounded in the attack.

The southeast has been scorched by violence since a ceasefire between the PKK and the government collapsed last July. The government has said it has killed thousands of militants since then, while more than 350 members of the security forces have been killed in the fighting.

Round-the-clock curfews have been instituted in parts of the southeast, where the economy has also been devastated by the fighting. One of the hardest hit areas has been Diyarbakir’s historic Sur district, which is encircled by UNESCO-listed, Roman-era walls.

Development Minister Cevdet Yilmaz, who was in the area ahead of Davutoglu’s visit, said the government wanted to rebuild the region.

“We are here to rebuild Diyarbakir and make it beautiful, and they want to destroy it,” he said in comments broadcast live. “We will not retreat in fear.”

The government has announced an ambitious restoration plan for the southeast.

It is not the first such attack in Turkey this year. A PKK offshoot has claimed two car bomb attacks in the capital Ankara over the last few months.

The first, on February 17, targeted a military bus and killed 29 people, mostly soldiers. The second, just under a month later, killed 37 in a crowded transport hub.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

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