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Police hold 4 over Turkey bomb
04/01/2008 16:38 - (SA)
Diyarbakir - Police are holding four suspects in custody in connection with a car bomb attack that killed five people and injured 68, Diyarbakir's chief prosecutor said on Friday.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Thursday on a road in central Diyarbakir, about 100 metres from a military facility as an army vehicle carrying some 50 soldiers was passing by, but first suspicions fell on the outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
Four of the dead were high school students attending classes at a nearby private school to prepare for university exams and the wounded include about 30 soldiers, chief prosecutor Durdu Kavak said in a statement.
"Four people have been taken into custody as part of efforts to identify and catch the perpetrators. Several lines of investigation are being pursued," the statement said.
The PKK, fighting for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast since 1984 and listed as a terrorist group by much of the international community, had threatened to retaliate against Turkish air strikes on its bases in northern Iraq last month.
The Turkish media suggested on Friday that police believed Thursday's blast was caused by a plastic explosive of a type known to be widely used by the PKK.
As part of stepped up security measures after the Diyarbakir blast, police in Van, eastern Turkey, seized 50 kilos of explosives, grenades and home-made land mine in a minibus abandoned in an empty lot, the Anatolia news agency reported. An investigation was underway.
Bomb experts
Turkish army chief Yasar Buyukanit was expected to fly later on Friday into Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast, to obtain first-hand information on the explosion and visit the wounded in hospital, a local security source said.
Several cabinet ministers - including Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker, himself a Kurd from Diyarbakir - are also expected, the source added.
Bomb experts continued to comb the site of the explosion for clues Friday as municipal workers began to clean up the debris from the street near a large shopping mall and the Diyarbakir City Hall, an AFP correspondent saw.
Grieving relatives buried three of the dead, some of the mourners condemning the PKK as responsible for the blast.
Thursday's attack came as the Turkish army, assisted by US intelligence, stepped up action against PKK rebels who use neighbouring northern Iraq as a springboard for cross-border attacks inside Turkey.
The military has confirmed three air strikes on PKK positions in northern Iraq since December 16, in addition to a land operation in northern Iraq to prevent a group of rebels from infiltrating Turkey.
Several bomb attacks
Local Iraqi officials have reported two other air raids.
At least 150 militants have been killed and more than 200 PKK positions destroyed in the raids so far, the Turkish military said.
PKK rebels have been blamed for several bomb attacks in Diyarbakir and other major cities in the recent past, including one in June near a bus stop in central Diyarbakir that wounded seven people.
In 2006, 10 people, including seven children, were killed and 14 injured in a blast at a crowded city park, which officials also blamed on a PKK bomb.
More than 37 000 people have been killed since the PKK took up arms in 1984.
- AFP
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