Posted on 11/18/2003 12:29:26 PM PST by SJackson
ISTANBUL : Turkey's Jews came together in a high-walled cemetery in Istanbul for the funeral of six victims of the bomb attacks that tore through two synagogues in the ancient city at the weekend.
Several hundred mourners, including Israeli parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin, gathered despite driving rain to bury the six who were among 25 people killed in the bombings suspected to be linked to the al-Qaeda terror network.
Security was tight for the emotional ceremony, with a police helicopter circling overhead as armed police in bullet-proof vests lined neighbouring streets and conducted searches of those entering the cemetery in Istanbul's European quarter.
The dead included an 83-year-old woman and her eight-year-old grand-daughter who were among worshippers at Sabbath prayers when suicide bombers in explosive-laden trucks struck at the Neve Shalom and Beth Israel synagogyes on Saturday.
Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Tuesday he believed clues uncovered so far suggested an al-Qaeda link while the Turkish press published pictures of four Turkish Islamist militants believed to be involved.
The six coffins were wrapped in red and white Turkish flags, a rare honour usually only accorded to dignitaries or public servants such as policemen or soldiers who have died in the line of duty.
"In the new order where the world is getting smaller, and borders are getting increasingly blurred, it is unthinkable for any belief system to preach and support terror," Istanbul's chief rabbi Yitzhak Haleva said.
"Today the attacks throughout the world do not only target Jews, but unfortunately people of all beliefs lose their lives or face damage because of these meaningless and inhuman attacks," he said.
The six were buried before close relatives and friends away from the gaze of the press and television cameras alongside the victims of a 1986 shooting attack by Palestinian radicals at the Neve Shalom synagogue that killed 22.
Most of the victims of Saturday's attacks were members of Turkey's dominant Muslim population, including a police officer at one of the synagogues whose memorial was attended by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Most of them are being buried in private ceremonies.
"Let us hope that innocent lives are not taken anymore, that the sanctity of the holy month of Ramadan of Muslims, and the holy sabbath of the world Jewry is respected and that never again will children, women and men die," said Haleva.
- AFP
Didn't realize this.
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