A car bomb has killed seven police officers and wounded more than two dozen other people in Turkey's Diyarbakir, a day before the prime minister was due to visit the biggest city in the largely Kurdish southeast.
A parked car laden with explosives was detonated by remote control on Thursday as a minibus carrying the police officers turned a corner on a busy street, security sources said, adding that civilians were among the wounded.
President Tayyip Erdogan, who is on a visit to Washington for a nuclear security summit, denounced the attack, saying it showed the "ugly face" of militants "as they are cornered".
"This shows terrorism's ugly face again. The determination of our security forces will, God willing, put an end" to it, Erdogan said in a speech to the Brookings Institute.
He said 27 people had also been wounded in the attack.
The southeast has been scorched by violence since a ceasefire between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the government collapsed last July.
The government has said it has killed thousands of militants since then, while more than 350 members of the security forces have been killed in the fighting.
Round-the-clock curfews have been instituted in parts of the southeast, where the economy also been devastated by the fighting.
One of the hardest hit areas has been Diyarbakir's historic Sur district, which is encircled by UNESCO-listed, Roman-era walls.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bomb attack. A PKK offshoot has claimed two car bomb attacks this year in the capital Ankara.
The first, on February 17, targeted a military bus and killed 29 people, mostly soldiers. The second, just under a month later, killed 37 in a crowded transport hub.
