Deadly car bomb hits police HQ near Diyarbakir, Turkey

• As DSS alerts public as fraudsters devise new tactics

A car bomb blast has hit a police headquarters in south-eastern Turkey, killing five people and injuring at least 39, officials say.

A woman and a baby are reported to be among the dead. Rescuers are searching through the rubble at the scene in Cinar district, Diyarbakir province.

Officials blamed the blast on Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) militants, who are active in the mainly Kurdish province.

No group has so far said it carried out the attack.

The bomb was detonated at the entrance of the Cinar district police complex, officials say. The blast also damaged nearby residential buildings.

The attackers then reportedly fired rockets at the headquarters.

Diyarbakir province has seen violent clashes between PKK separatists and the Turkish army in recent months.

Last year, the city of Diyarbakir and a number of other areas in the south-east were put under curfew as part of a security crackdown.

This followed a bomb blast that left 16 soldiers dead and a rebel ambush that killed 14 police officers – both incidents in the east.

A ceasefire between the army and the PKK collapsed in July, and Turkish jets have since bombed PKK bases in northern Iraq and the army launched a ground operation there.

Turkey is also part of a US-led coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq and Syria.

However, Ankara has been accused of hitting mostly PKK targets, angering Kurds who are themselves fighting IS in the two countries.

In the meantime, the FCT Command of Directorate of State Services, (DSS) has alerted members of the public on the new style of operation by fraudsters who specialised in getting women nakedness through animation and sent to their targets.

The Director of the command, Mr Abubakar Bubuche said this while presenting two suspected fraudsters to newsmen on Wednesday in Abuja. He warned members of the public to desist from sending their sensitive photographs to the Internet so that criminals would not use them against them.

He said: “This is to inform the general public about the activities of a criminal syndicates’ style of operation include among others, the use of computer animation to strip their victims and put their nude pictures on facebook and other social media platform.

“The gang calls up their potential victims and orders them to pay certain amount of money to a given account numbers or have their personal pictures edited and posted nude on the internet,”he said.

Bubuche said several complaints prompted the Service to swing into action which eventually led to the arrest of two people in connection with the internet fraud. He said the suspects, 35 and 22 years respectively, were arrested in Maiduguri by operatives from the Command.

“The public may wish to note that this syndicate has diverse membership with various professional skills, especially in the ICT,”he said.

Babuche called on FCT residents to be wary of fraudsters and promptly report such cases and suspected persons to the security agencies. He reiterated the Service’s resolved to discharge its duties with every sense of responsibility and commitment.

BBC with additional report from The News.