Kurdish militants claim killing Turkish police

Ankara (Turkey)

Kurdish militants on Wednesday claimed the murder of two Turkish police officers as revenge for a deadly suicide bombing near the Syrian border blamed on Islamic State jihadists that killed 32 activists.

The attack by Kurdistan Workers' Party militants in the town of Ceylanpinar intensified fears that the fighting raging in Syria between Kurds and IS extremists was spilling over onto Turkish territory.

In Ankara, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu convened his cabinet to discuss an action plan for strengthening security on Turkey's  border with Syria after Monday's devastating attack in the town of Suruc.

Officials said the suicide bomber had been identified as a 20-year old Turkish student  who had been in contact with IS jihadists for several months.  Access to Twitter was meanwhile blocked for several hours in Turkey after  a court imposed a blanket publication ban on images of the Suruc attack.

The authorities had earlier appeared at a loss to explain the shooting dead in the head of the two police at their shared home at a block of flats in Ceylanpinar. But the military wing of the PKK outlawed as a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies said it had carried out the attack as a reprisal.

"A punitive action was carried out  in revenge for the massacre in Suruc," the People's Defence Forces (HPG) said in a statement on its website, accusing the two officers of cooperating with IS. It described the attackers as an "Apoist team of self-sacrifice", in reference to the PKK's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan whose nickname is "Apo" or "uncle".