The Jerusalem Post

PM condemns attacks in Cairo, Istanbul,

- • By DAVID DOLAN and TUVAN GUMRUKCU

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – An offshoot of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) claimed responsibi­lity on Sunday for twin bombings that killed 38 people and wounded 155 outside an Istanbul soccer stadium, an attack for which the Turkish government vowed vengeance.

The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), which has claimed several other deadly attacks in Turkey this year, said on its website that it was behind Saturday night’s blasts, which shook a nation still trying to recover from a failed military coup and a number of bombings this year.

Saturday’s attacks took place near the Vodafone Arena, home to Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer team, about two hours after a match at the stadium and appeared to target police officers. The first was a car bomb outside the stadium, followed within a minute by a suicide bomb attack in an adjacent park.

TAK, which has claimed responsibi­lity for an Ankara bombing that killed 37, is an offshoot of the PKK, which has carried out a violent, three-decade insurgency, mainly in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast.

“What we must focus on is this terrorism burden. Our people should have no doubt we will continue our battle against terrorism until the end,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters after meeting wounded victims in an Istanbul hospital.

Speaking at a funeral for five of the police officers at the Istanbul police headquarte­rs, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said, “Sooner or later, we will have our vengeance. This blood will not be left on the ground, no matter what the price, what the cost.”

Soylu also warned those who would offer support to the attackers on social media or elsewhere; the comments were aimed at pro-Kurdish politician­s the government accuses of having links to the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist organizati­on by the United States, Europe and Turkey.

In recent months, thousands of Kurdish politician­s have been detained, including dozens of mayors and the leaders of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), parliament’s second-biggest opposition party, accused of having links to the PKK.

The crackdown against Kurdish politician­s has coincided with widespread purges of state institutio­ns after July’s failed coup, which the government blames on followers of a US-based Muslim cleric.

Turkey says the measures are necessary to defend its security, while rights groups and some Western allies accuse it of skirting the rule of law and trampling on freedoms.

The pro-Kurdish HDP condemned the attack and urged the government to end what it called the language and politics of “polarizati­on, hostility and conflict.”

Soylu said the first explosion was at an assembly point for riot police. The second came as police surrounded the suicide bomber in the nearby Macka park.

Thirty-eight people died, including 30 police and seven civilians, he said. One person remained unidentifi­ed.

Thirteen people have been detained in connection with the attacks, Soylu said.

A total of 155 people were being treated in hospital, with 14 of them in intensive care and five in surgery, Health Minister Recep Akdag told a news conference.

Flags flew at half-mast and Sunday was declared a day of national mourning.

Video supposedly showing the father of one of the victims, a 19-year-old medical student who was in Istanbul for a weekend visit, went viral on social media in Turkey.

“I don’t want my son to be a martyr, my son was massacred,” the footage showed the father saying. “His goal was to be a doctor and help people like this, but now I am carrying him back in a funeral car.”

 ?? (Murad Sezer/Reuters) ?? PEOPLE CARRY the flag-draped coffins of police officers who were killed in Saturday’s blast, yesterday in Istanbul.
(Murad Sezer/Reuters) PEOPLE CARRY the flag-draped coffins of police officers who were killed in Saturday’s blast, yesterday in Istanbul.

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