ISTANBUL: A bomb blast yesterday outside a store in Istanbul wounded 14 people, Turkish police said, amid increased worries about Kurdish separatist violence.
The state Anatolian news agency said the blast appeared to have been caused by a percussion bomb, often used by Kurdish militants and other radical groups operating in Turkey.
Authorities have warned of possible PKK attacks on civilian and security targets in cities and towns, especially in the run-up to national elections on July 22.
“It is still not certain what kind of bomb it was,” Istanbul police chief Celalettin Cerrah said at the scene of the explosion.
Percussion bombs typically make a loud noise but rarely cause serious damage. “The explosion was very powerful. We were really shaken,” said Muttalip Erdogan, who sells kebabs.
The blast, which shattered the windows of many shops and offices, occurred in the Bakirkoy district of Turkey’s largest city, near the airport, where Kurdish militants have carried out similar attacks in the past.
Tensions are running especially high amid increasing clashes between Turkish troops and guerrillas of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.
The clashes have fuelled talk of a possible major Turkish army incursion into northern Iraq to attack PKK bases there.
In May, eight people were killed when a suicide bomber struck a shopping mall in the capital Ankara. Authorities blamed that attack on the PKK, though the group denied involvement.
Last week, seven paramilitary policemen were killed when PKK rebels attacked their base in the eastern province of Tunceli.
On Saturday, three soldiers were killed when rebels remotely detonated a landmine near the Iraqi border.
Meanwhile, two Kurdish rebels have been killed in separate clashes with Turkish security forces in the mountainous east of the country, officials said yesterday.
In Mus province, one rebel was killed late on Saturday after security forces were tipped off about the passage through the village of Kayalisu of PKK rebels.
Two villagers were also injured in the exchange of fire, local security sources said, adding that two rebels were arrested in the operation.
The second incident, also Saturday evening, occurred in neighbouring Bingol province when rebels and security forces clashed at a vehicle checkpoint, the governor said in a statement.
The rebel killed in that clash was a regional PKK leader of Syrian origin wanted for an attack on a police post in neighbouring Tunceli last Monday that left seven officers dead, the statement said.
“We will continue to wage with determination our just war against separatist terrorism ... until the annihilation of the final terrorist,” President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said in a statement carried yesterday by the Anatolia news agency.
Each incident has added to pressure on the government, which faces a strong nationalist challenge in the election, to get tougher with the PKK.
Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since it launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984. – Agencies |
