Death toll mounts in terror attack outside stadium

ISTANBUL — A shadowy Kurdish terrorist group has claimed responsibility for a pair of bombings that killed dozens of people outside a stadium in central Istanbul Saturday night, escalating an already bloody conflict between Kurdish separatists and the Turkish state.

The little-known Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) — which seeks autonomy for Turkey’s ethnic Kurds, and opposes negotiations with the government — announced Sunday that two of its members carried out the attacks.

The twin explosions, from a car bomb and a separate suicide attack, killed at least 38 people, including 30 riot police. Another 155 people were wounded.

It’s the sixth deadly bombing in major cities this year claimed by TAK — an offshoot of the larger Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — which said on Sunday it wouldn’t allow a “comfortable life” in Turkey while security forces still fight the Kurdish minority in the country’s southeast.

Violence has surged since a peace agreement between the PKK and Turkish government fell apart in 2015.

Ethnic Kurds — who live across areas of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran — make up about 20 per cent of Turkey’s 75 million people.

Analysts say that the TAK terrorists split with the PKK over negotiations with the government, but that the two groups maintain strategic ties.

“All terror organizations are attacking our nation and our people for the same goal,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a written statement following the attacks, referring specifically to the PKK, the Islamic State and the followers of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who the government accuses of masterminding a failed coup in July.

“Whenever Turkey takes a positive step with regards to its future, a response comes immediately before us in the form of blood, lives, savagery and chaos at the hands of terrorist organizations.”

Erdogan described the blasts as a terrorist attack on police and civilians. He said the aim of the bombings, two hours after the end of a soccer match at Vodafone arena attended by thousands of people, had been to cause maximum casualties.

“Nobody should doubt that with God’s will, we as a country and a nation will overcome terror, terrorist organizations … and the forces behind them,” he said in his statement.

The TAK said Saturday’s attack was reprisal for violence in the southeast and the ongoing imprisonment of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Authorities on Sunday declared a national day of mourning, and officials vowed to pursue the terrorists.