Bomb goes off on Turkey’s southern rail, driver injured

Turkish officials have reported a bomb attack on a train traveling in the southeast of the country, saying the locomotive driver was injured after the bomb was detonated on the railroad.

Security sources said on Sunday that the freight train was traveling on the rail line near the city of Saray in the province of Van when the bomb left on the track went off.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the train’s locomotive was damaged in the incident and the driver sustained injuries. They blamed the attack on militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), although there was no claim of responsibility from the outlawed group.

Turkey has in the past blamed the PKK for similar attacks on its railroads, pipelines and other targets, saying the group tries to wreak havoc through inflicting damage on the country’s civilian infrastructure.

The PKK has claimed dozens of such attacks. The group began the attacks after Ankara declared in July last year an end to years of peace negotiations and started a crackdown in the Kurdish-dominated regions in the southeast. The anti-PKK drive was later expanded to areas in northern Iraq and Syria. The Turkish military has launched an operation into the Syrian territory to attack positions of the Kurdish group known as the YPG, which Ankara says is connected to the PKK.

Turkey says thousands of PKK militants have been killed over the past months in the army’s operations against the group. Pro-Kurdish political parties and activists, say, however, that most of those killed have been civilians.