Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that "terrorists" will never achieve their aims, hours after a blast near the parliament in Ankara injured two police officers.

The powerful explosion outside the interior ministry, which was followed by large flames, was heard several kilometres from the site of the attack.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terror group by Turkey and its Western allies that has been waging a deadly insurgency against Ankara for four decades, claimed responsibility for the blast.

The targeted district is home to several other ministries and the Turkish parliament, which reopened as planned in the afternoon with an address from Erdogan.

"The villains who threaten the peace and security of citizens have not achieved their objectives and will never achieve them," Erdogan told the parliament.

The interior ministry said two attackers arrived in a commercial vehicle around 9:30 am (0630 GMT) in front of "the entrance gate of the General Directorate of Security of our Ministry of the Interior, and carried out a bomb attack."

"One of the terrorists blew himself up. The other was killed by a bullet to the head before he had a chance to blow himself up," Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said in a press statement outside the ministry.

"Two of our police officers were lightly injured" in the exchange of fire, but their lives were not in danger, he added.

In a statement to the ANF news agency, which is close to the Kurdish movement, the PKK said that "a sacrificial action was carried out against the Turkish Interior Ministry."

The Ankara police headquarters said on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that it was carrying out "controlled explosions" of "suspicious packages" to prevent other explosions.

The Ankara prosecutor's office said it was opening an investigation and banned access to the area. Local media was asked to stop broadcasting images from the scene of the attack. (AFP)