|
A suicide car bomb went off near bus stops in the heart of
Turkey’s capital on Sunday, killing at least 34 people and wounding around 125
others, officials said. Two of the dead are believed to be the assailants.
A senior government official
told The Associated Press that police suspect that Kurdish militants carried
out the attack, which occurred on Ankara’s main boulevard, close to ministries.
At least one of the bombers was a woman, he said. The official spoke on
condition of anonymity on the grounds that the investigation was ongoing.
The bombing was the third in
the city in five months and came as Turkey is grappling with a host of issues,
including renewed fighting with Kurdish rebels, threats from the Islamic State
group and a Syrian refugee crisis.
Earlier Sunday, Turkish
authorities said they were imposing curfews on two mainly Kurdish towns where
Turkey’s security forces were set to launch large-scale operations against
Kurdish militants. Russia on Sunday also accused Turkey of sending its military
across the Syrian border to prevent Kurdish groups there from consolidating
their positions.
The attack came just three
weeks after a suicide car bombing in the capital targeted buses carrying
military personnel, killing 29 people. A Kurdish militant group which is an
offshoot of an outlawed rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK,
claimed responsibility for the Feb. 17 attack.
President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan issued a statement vowing to bring “terrorism to its knees” and said
Turkey would use its right to self-defense to prevent future attacks.
“Our people should not worry,
the struggle against terrorism will for certain end in success and terrorism
will be brought to its knees,” Erdogan said.
Saudi state television said
that a Saudi woman and three children were among those wounded in the attack.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman condemned the bombing and extended his condolences
to the Turkish people, according to the state-run Saudi news channel
Al-Ekhbaria.
At least 19 of the wounded
were in serious condition, Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu told reporters.
He said that 30 of the victims died at the scene, while the other four died at
hospitals.
Interior Minister Efkan Ala
said the attack wouldn’t deter the country from its fight against terrorism. He
confirmed the blast was the result of a car bomb that targeted civilians at bus
stops on Ataturk Bulvari close to Kizilay square.
Ala said authorities had
obtained evidence pointing to the group behind the attack, but said an
announcement would be made after the investigation is completed, most probably
on Monday. No group has claimed responsibility.
The private NTV news channel
said several vehicles caught fire following the blast which also shattered the
windows of shops that line the boulevard and the square.
Dogan Asik, 28, was on a
packed bus when the explosion occurred.
“There were about 40 people,”
said Asik, who suffered injuries to his face and arm. “It (the bus) slowed
down. A car went by us, and ‘boom’ it exploded.”
Police sealed off the area
and pushed onlookers and journalists back, warning that there could be a second
bomb. Forensic teams were examining the scene.
The US Embassy had two days
earlier issued a security warning about a potential plot to attack Turkish
government buildings and housing in one Ankara neighborhood and asked American
citizens to avoid those areas. The cab bomb went off in a different
neighborhood.
As with the previous
bombings, Turkish authorities quickly imposed a ban Sunday preventing media
organizations from broadcasting or publishing graphic images of the blast or
from the scene. The state-run Anadolu Agency said the government-run
telecommunications agency had decided to block access to websites that
published images from the scene.
|
|
0 comments:
Post a Comment