A car bomb in Cizre, south-east Turkey, has killed 11 people including 8 policemen and injured 78 others.

The explosion took place at seven o’clock on Friday morning local time (4am GMT) and caused severe damage to a riot police headquarters.

Security sources said the car exploded at a police check point 50 metres away from the riot police headquarters.

Local authorities previously imposed a curfew in the town of Cizre several times over the past few months due to Turkish army and police operations to clear the town of tunnels and barriers set up by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which claimed responsibility for the bombing yesterday.

Whilst the PKK said in a statement posted on the internet that it was responsible for the attack in Cizre, it said that it did not deliberately target the main opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in an attack in north-eastern Turkey on Thursday.

The Turkish government announced that PKK fighters targeted the main opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s convoy. Kilicdaroglu was not injured in the attack which occurred on a road in the Artvin province, north east Turkey.

The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan strongly condemned the bombing and said that it would increase his country’s resolve to fight terrorism.

Erdogan said in a statement that “The attack which occurred at a time when Turkey is fighting an intense war against the terrorist organisations inside and outside its borders will increase the resolve of our state and our nation”.