Turkish police increased security at tourist resorts yesterday as investigators sifted through the wreckage of a minibus ripped apart by a bomb that killed five people, including a British and an Irish woman.

In the normally bustling Aegean resort of Kusadasi, the site of Saturday?s blast, locals and tourists were uneasy and streets were quieter than normal after the second attack to hit the area in a week at the height of the tourism season.

A Turkish daily said a Kurdish militant group, TAK, claimed responsibility for the attack, but this could not be confirmed. It has claimed a series of bombings in the last year, including an attack which injured 20 in the same region six days earlier.

British Ambassador Peter Westmacott, visiting the injured in hospital, told the BBC authorities believed the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the main guerrilla group, had planted the bomb. A top PKK official condemned the attack in a statement.

Three Turks, two women and a man, were also killed in the blast, which tore the roof off the minibus as it travelled through the town on the way to a beach on Saturday morning. Another 13 people were injured, five of them Britons.

An official said there was no change in their condition overnight. Officials initially suspected a female suicide bomber had triggered the blast, but they said it was now more likely the explosives had been planted on the vehicle.

Gulseren NALBANTOGLU