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Four bombs in Turk resort hurt twenty-seven
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Four bombs in Turk resort hurt twenty-seven
Four separate bombs at a popular Turkish coastal resort and in the country’s commercial hub Istanbul wounded at least 27 people, including 10 British tourists, authorities said yesterday.
Ten Britons and 11 Turks were wounded when their minibus blew up on one of the main streets of Marmaris, a busy tourist town on the Mediterranean coast. The British Foreign Office said three of the Britons were in intensive care. There were no immediate claims of responsibility.
A Marmaris police official, who declined to be named, told Reuters 21 people were injured in Marmaris, including 16 people inside the minibus. Five others were hurt by two percussion bombs – all three explosions happened within 15 minutes.
“There were three bombs ... Two of them were not important, they were percussion bombs,” he said, adding the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was suspected of carrying out the attacks.
The bombs in Marmaris exploded between midnight and 0015 local time (21.15 GMT) while the Istanbul blast, which injured six people, took place at 1830 local time.
Marmaris is a coastal resort popular with west European and Russian tourists as well as Turks – for many the last weekend of their annual summer holiday.
“I can confirm that there were three explosions (in Marmaris) but the (British) injuries all came from the first explosion,” said a British embassy spokeswoman in Ankara.
Ambulances and police cars were at the scene of the explosions. Police explosives experts wearing white suits were inspecting the blast sites in Marmaris while local Governor Temel Kocaklar said the perpetrators would be caught swiftly.
Istanbul police chief Celalettin Cerrah said six people had been injured when a device exploded near a school in Istanbul’s Bagcilar district.
“They left a package on a road against the garden wall... At around 2130 (18.30 GMT) it exploded and six citizens were injured,” Cerrah told state-run Anatolian news agency, but did not provide further details.
Burns, lacerations</B>
“We have four British casualties. All four have burns and lacerations from the explosion in the lower extremities,” said Suzanne Poyraz, a spokeswoman at Caria private hospital in Marmaris. Others had been taken to other hospitals. “None of them are serious ... they’re quite badly shocked.”
Kurdish separatists, leftists and Islamic militants have carried out bomb attacks in Turkey in the past. The tourist industry is a powerful motor of the Turkish economy, hoping to reach $20 billion in revenues and 26 million visitors this year.
The blasts came two days after two bombs exploded in the southern Turkish city of Adana, injuring four people.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which launched a separatist campaign in 1984, and other militant groups have been blamed or claimed responsibility for similar blasts in the past.
Turkey, like the United States and European Union, considers the PKK a terrorist organisation and blames it for the deaths of more than 30,000 people.
Ankara has recently increased its troop presence in the mainly Kurdish southeast, where security forces are battling PKK guerrillas.
Emma Ross-Thomas</B>
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