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Turkey: Kurdish group claimed responsibility for
two bomb blasts
6.8.2006
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DIYARBAKIR,
Kurdistan-Turkey, Aug 5, 2006 (AFP) , -- A radical
Kurdish group claimed responsibility Saturday for
two bomb blasts that left 17 people injured in
southern Turkey the day before as a fresh bomb
targeted an office of the main opposition party.
The bomb, planted at the entrance of the regional
headquarters of the center-left Republican People's
Party in Diyarbakir, the main city of the
predominantly Kurdish southeast, damaged the
building, but caused no casualties, officials said.
Police sources said it was most probably a
percussion bomb, designed to make loud noise rather
than kill.
There was no immediate word about the perpetrators.
Diyarbakir is a hotbed of Kurdish militancy and the
rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has carried out
similar attacks here in the past.
Earlier, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a
shadowy group believed to be a front for the PKK,
claimed responsibility for two bombs that exploded
almost simultaneously outside a bank in the southern
city of Adana on Friday.
The statement, posted on the group's web site, said
the attacks were a reprisal "for the fascist
treatment of Chairman Apo and our people."
Apo is the nickname of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed
leader of the PKK, which has waged a bloody campaign
for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast since 1984.
TAK said the Oyakbank branch was targeted because it
was affiliated to the army and threatened more
violence.
Oyakbank is owned by the Turkish military's pension
fund.
The first explosion occurred near a cash point of
Oyakbank and was followed six minutes later by a
second blast at a nearby construction site.
Seventeen people, including eight policemen and two
cadets from the local police academy, were injured.
Turkish officials say TAK is a front for PKK attacks
on civilian targets; the PKK claims TAK is a
splinter group over which it has no control.
TAK has claimed 10 other bomb attacks in urban
centers across Turkey this year, in which six people
were killed and some 120 others injured.
The deadliest of them was at the Mediterranean
resort of Manavgat, in which three foreign tourists
and a Turk perished.
The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed more than
37,000 lives since the PKK, blacklisted as a
terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and
the United States.
AFP
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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