Four Turkish soldiers were killed on Thursday in an attack caused by an improvised explosive device in Kurdistan (south-eastern Turkey), the provincial governor said.
Another five soldiers were injured in the explosion as their military vehicle was passing through the Gercus district of Batman province, the authorities said in a statement.
It blamed the attack on “terrorists” and said a wide operation had been launched to capture the culprits.
Although the governor’s office did not explicitly blame the attack on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the state has been battling PKK fighters in the southeast region after the collapse of a two-year ceasefire in 2015.
The PKK has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984 for independence of Kurdistan.