Car Bomb Attack on Turkish Governor Kills Five

Reuters ^ | 7/2/2004 | Daren Butler

[a_Turk]

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A car bomb ripped through a street in the eastern Turkish town of Van on Friday, killing five people and wounding 24 in an apparent attack on the local governor, who was unhurt, officials said.

The bomb, planted in a parked car in the center of town and detonated by remote control, revived security worries in Turkey after a series of explosions before and during a NATO (news - web sites) summit in the country's largest city Istanbul this week.

There was no claim of responsibility but a police spokesman said officials believed the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was behind the bombing. Anatolian news agency reported him as saying bomb disposal experts defused a second bomb in the area.

The PKK ended its six-year unilateral cease-fire a month ago, triggering renewed violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast where Van is located. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the PKK's separatist conflict with Turkey, but fighting dwindled after the 1999 capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Far-left and Islamist militants are also active in Turkey and have staged bomb attacks in the past.

The blast shattered windows in surrounding buildings and tore holes in the bodywork of the official black Mercedes car carrying Hikmet Tan, governor of an impoverished, mountainous province bordering Iran.

Tan, who was on the way to his office, told CNN Turk television: "I was going to work when there was a large explosion around 9:15 a.m. (0215 EDT). All windows were shattered around the car ... Nothing happened to me, the bodyguard or driver."

SECURITY JITTERS

Those killed by the blast were pedestrians on their way to work and shopkeepers. Some of the injured were seriously hurt, a police official said.

Television pictures showed men lifting a body from the middle of the road and the burning remains of a vehicle by a pool of water gushing from burst water pipes.

Amid security jitters, a railway official said a train traveling between the capital Ankara and Istanbul had been halted on Friday after a bomb tip-off. Passengers were taken off the train for half an hour but no device was found.

Leftist groups were blamed for a series of small blasts in the run-up to the NATO summit in Istanbul. Four al Qaeda-linked suicide bombings killed more than 60 people in the city last November.

The police spokesman also confirmed a newspaper report that police had found and defused a bomb in a multi-storey car park at Istanbul airport two days before the summit.

The newspaper Sabah said a radical leftist group planted the 11 lb of explosives in a tire at the airport as part of a planned attack on President Bush (news - web sites), who arrived in the city on June 27, the paper said.

On Tuesday a small bomb exploded on a plane at Istanbul airport, injuring three cleaners, hours before Bush flew from the airport after the summit.

[a_Turk]

Terrorists hiding in the andil mountains in Northern Iraq



A patrol of the People's Defence Forces returns to their camp in the heart of northern Iraq (news - web sites)'s poorly accessible Qandil mountains June 15, 2004. The Turkish Kurd rebel group, formerly known as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), announced the end of its six-year unilateral cease-fire with Turkey on June 1, telling investors and tourists to stay away from the country. TO MOVE WITH FEATURE STORY BC-IRAQ-GUERRILLAS REUTERS/Sasa Kralj REUTERS



A patrol of the People's Defence Forces crosses a creek to return to their camp in the heart of northern Iraq (news - web sites)'s poorly accessible Qandil mountains June 15, 2004. The Turkish Kurd rebel group, formerly known as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), announced the end of its six-year unilateral cease-fire with Turkey on June 1, telling investors and tourists to stay away from the country. TO MOVE WITH FEATURE STORY BC-IRAQ-GUERRILLAS REUTERS/Sasa Kralj

[a_Turk]

ping..

[struwwelpeter]

Bump

[mtbopfuyn]

Far-left and Islamist militants are also active in Turkey and have staged bomb attacks in the past.

Far-left, kind of like Kerry and Teddy? Yep, I thought the lefties and Islamaniacs were buddies.

[knighthawk]

Kurdish rebels deny responsibility for Turkey car bomb
Kurdish rebels have denied accusations they were behind a deadly car bomb attack against a provincial governor in eastern Turkey, the pro-Kurdish Mesopotamia news agency reported.

"Acts of this kind have no place in our understanding of legitimate defence and we have nothing to do with the attack," Zubeyir Aydar, the head of Kongra-Gel, told the Europe-based agency from northern Iraq.

A Turkish police spokesman had earlier said they suspected rebels from Kongra-Gel to be behind Friday's attack in which a car bomb exploded in the city centre of Van as governor Hikmet Tan's convoy was driving by.

Mt Tan and his police escort escaped unhurt, but six people were killed and 23 injured - all of them passers-by - in the blast.

Kongra-Gel - the successor of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) which led a 15-year armed campaign for self-rule in south-eastern Turkey - last month called off a five-year-old truce, accusing Turkish forces of trying to wipe them out.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200407/s1146009.htm

[marron]

I have been expecting guerrilla activity to pick up as pipeline work proceeds. The pipeline is expected to be finished a year from now, actually two pipelines, they are going to build a gas line in parallel. The NGOs and environmentalists are ramping up the pressure trying to stop it, but I am expecting to see teeth in the form of terrorist attacks in an effort to make it unfeasible.

Pulling their string would be Saudis or Iranians. This would be more of the same; every pipeline outside of OPEC is under attack one way or another; lawsuits, mass demonstrations designed to stop the work, or actual military attack. Since the NGOs and greens never act against pipelines in OPEC countries, I have to believe that they are funded by OPEC money, probably Saudi.

I notice that Turkey is proposing that Iran have a share of the gas pipeline. Maybe they think that giving them a stake would translate into fewer guerrilla attacks... The PKK terrorist no doubt has his agenda, and the people funding him have theirs.

[a_Turk]

The little terrorists that couldn't...

I'll believe those baby killers, why not. /sarc

[rmlew]

It may not have been the PKK.
It would be a brilliant move for Ansar Al-Islam or another Islamist group who dislike the secular Kurds and Turkey. (I don't think that they will ever forgive Turkey for ending the Caliphate.)