Dozens Injured in Turkey Blasts

28/08/2006| IslamWeb

Four separate blasts in Turkey's popular coastal region and the country's commercial capital, Istanbul, have injured at least 22 people.

The state news agency reported that three blasts occurred near the southern coastal area of Marmaris early on Monday and another in Istanbul late on Sunday.

The Istanbul blast was in a poor neighborhood of the Bagcilar district near the local governor’s office. It injured six people, one critically, police said.

The British foreign office said 10 British tourists were among those wounded in the blasts in Marmaris on the Mediterranean coast. There were no immediate claims of responsibility and the authorities were not immediately available for comment.

The first explosion hit holidaymakers in a minibus on one of the town's main streets, packed with bars and restaurants. The other two bombs were placed in rubbish bins.
 
Ambulances
  
Television pictures showed ambulances and police cars at the scene of the explosions.
  
Marmaris is popular with west European and Russian tourists as well as Turks - for many the last weekend of their annual summer holiday.

Anatolian news agency quoted the Istanbul police chief, Celalettin Cerrah, as saying six people had been injured when a device exploded near a school in Istanbul's Bagcilar.

"They left a package on a road against the garden wall... At around 2130 [1830 GMT] it exploded and six citizens were injured," Cerrah said, but did not provide further details of whether it was a bomb and who planted the device.

Police explosive experts wearing white suits were inspecting the blast sites in Marmaris.

Tourist industry

Kurdish separatists, leftists and Islamist 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 $20billion in revenues and 26 million visitors this year.

The blasts came only two days after two bombs exploded in the southern Turkish city of Adana, injuring four people.
  
The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which launched a separatist campaign in 1984, and other 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 organization 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 fighters.

Photo Caption

An ambulance arrives at the scene