SURUC, Turkey — Kurdish militants claimed responsibility for the killing of two Turkish police officers on Wednesday in what they said was retaliation for a suspected ISIS suicide bombing, which killed 32 mostly young students.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said in a statement on one of its websites that the two police officers were killed at around 6 a.m. in the southeastern town of Ceylanpinar for “collaboration with the Daesh (ISIS) gangs.”

Security sources earlier told Reuters the officers were found dead with bullet wounds to the head in the house they shared in Ceylanpinar, on the border with Syria about 100 miles east of Suruc, the site of Monday’s suicide bombing.

Many of Turkey’s Kurds and opposition supporters suspect President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party of covertly backing ISIS against Kurdish fighters in Syria, something the government has repeatedly denied.

Anti-government protests after Monday’s bombing in Suruc erupted in several cities for a second night on Tuesday, with some of the demonstrators chanting “Murderer ISIS, collaborator Erdogan and AKP.”

“Although ISIS has been held responsible for this attack, Turkey’s AKP government, by resisting the taking of effective measures to prevent “Islamic State” and other reactionary forces, bears the real responsibility,” the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), whose support base is mostly Kurdish, said in a statement.