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Kurdish Militants Claim Deadly Attack on Turkish Checkpoint

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Smoke rises and fires still burn after Kurdish militants attacked a police checkpoint in Cizre, southeast Turkey, Aug. 26, 2016, with an explosives-laden truck, killing several police officers and wounding dozens more.
Smoke rises and fires still burn after Kurdish militants attacked a police checkpoint in Cizre, southeast Turkey, Aug. 26, 2016, with an explosives-laden truck, killing several police officers and wounding dozens more.

A Kurdish suicide bomber targeted a checkpoint near a police station in Cizre, southeast Turkey, Friday, killing at least 11 police officers and wounded scores of other people, the country's prime minister said.

Militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, claimed responsibility. The terrorist group has been linked to a series of attacks against police targets in the same region.

Turkish authorities have vowed to retaliate.

"We will give those vile [attackers] the answer they deserve. No terrorist organization can hold Turkey captive," Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said during a news conference in Istanbul.

The town of Cizre is in Sirnak, a province that borders Syria and Iraq and has a largely Kurdish population.

The PKK launched an armed rebellion in 1984, seeking an autonomous homeland in a vast area of the southeast bordered by Syria, Iraq and Iran. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the fighting.

Last year, the armed wing of the PKK scrapped a three-year cease-fire with Ankara after Turkish warplanes struck the group's military training bases in northern Iraq while PKK fighters battled Islamic State militants. Ankara also bombed several other PKK bases.

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