Turkish opposition leader attacked by gunmen

Turkey: Turkey's main opposition party leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu has escaped unharmed after his convoy was attacked by the country's outlawed Kurdish PKK militant group on Thursday in the northeast of the country said the interior minister.

 
Speaking to Turkey's NTV news channel, the Interior Minister Efkan Ala said that three soldiers were wounded in gun fire exchange with what he claimed were Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) attackers.
 
President Tayyip Erdogan who on Thursday sent tanks across the Turkish border into Syria to stop Syrian Kurds he links to the PKK occupying border areas being yielded by Islamic State fighters, vowed to root out and destroy the PKK, which has been seeking independence or autonomy.

A lawmaker in Kilicdaroglu's secularist Republican People's Party (CHP), Mehmet Bekaroglu, who was in the convoy of about 15 vehicles during the attack near the northeastern city of Artvin, said;

"They opened fire in front of the convoy."

Bekaroglu said Kilicdaroglu was flown out of the area by helicopter.

Speaking to NTV channel, Kilicdaroglu said;

"Don't worry about us. We are OK. We are currently in a safe area."

The CHP party who did not say who it believed was responsible for the attack, said one of the officers wounded had later died.

The CHP party's deputy leader Engin Altay described the attack as a "terrorist attack."

The pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP, which president Erdogan accuses of links with the PKK, in a statement condemned the attack "in the strongest terms."

In a written statement, the prime minister Binali Yildirimsaid;

"The attack on Kilicdaroglu's convoy in Artvin is a vile terrorist attack targeting democratic stability and peace of the people." 

But did not name any group behind the attack.