Three dead in army housing blast in SE Turkey

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Dec 11 (Reuters) Three people died and 15 others were wounded when a central heating blast today largely destroyed a five-storey army residential building in the largest city in southeast Turkey, hospital sources said.

The sources in Diyarbakir, in the predominantly Kurdish region, told Reuters two of the dead were children.

The governor's office in Diyarbakir said the central heating boiler was the cause of the blast at around 1130 IST, according to state-run Anatolian news agency.

Rescue workers and local residents were combing through the rubble of the building housing military families that had partly collapsed like a house of cards.

The armed forces headquarters in Ankara declined to comment.

Faulty and old gas-powered central heating systems regularly cause deadly blasts in residential buildings across Turkey.

There was no suggestion of foul play in Monday's blast.

Southeast Turkey has long been racked by separatist violence, though this has fallen off sharply since the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) called a unilateral ceasefire in October.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed struggle for an independent Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.

REUTERS BDP VV1433