Turkish officials blamed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and is considered a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies.
A car “was blown up by members of the separatist terror organisation”, it added, using a term to describe Kurdish militants.
Forty-six civilians and four police officers were injured, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
CNN-Turk television reported that some Iranian tourists in the bustling city were among the injured.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing, which came on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha.
But Besir Atalay, an AKP lawmaker from Van, pointed the finger of blame at the PKK.
“The terrorist organisation has targeted our party building and the AKP’s presence in the past. This is one of their attacks,” he added, in live comments on the private NTV television.
Witnesses said the blast shattered windows in the vicinity and the AKP’s provincial offices sustained severe damage.
In a message relayed by his brother, jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan said the Kurdish conflict could end if the state was ready.
“He said if the state is ready for the projects we can implement them in six months,” Mehmet Ocalan told supporters in Diyarbakir, without offering further details.
Mehmet Ocalan also said his brother was in “good health” amid concerns over the jailed leader’s welfare after months cut off from the outside world on Imrali prison island near Istanbul.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the PKK first took up arms in 1984, with the aim of carving out an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority. Turkey has also launched an operation inside Syria to remove Islamic State (IS) group militants as well as Syrian Kurdish militia from its frontier.
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