Police ‘capture’ suspected car bomber who targeted policemen

Turkish reporters defiant over press freedom case

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, April 2, (Agencies): Turkish authorities on Saturday detained a key suspect in a bombing that killed seven people and wounded 23 in the biggest attack of its kind in months in the strife-hit southeast, security sources said.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for Thursday’s bombing in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, one day before Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited the city and outlined plans to confiscate and rebuild a historic neighbourhood ruined in clashes since July.

Sources said police apprehended a man they believe parked the bomb-laden car and detonated it when a minibus carrying police officers passed it on a busy street. On Friday, authorities arrested nine people in connection with the bombing.

Separately, militants late on Friday used a car bomb to strike a military outpost near the town of Kiziltepe by the Syrian frontier. One civilian was killed and 13 people wounded, including three children and two soldiers.

A police officer from a combat unit was killed on Saturday in Yuksekova near the Iraqi border, where security forces began operations and imposed a round-the-clock curfew on March 13.

The predominately Kurdish southeastern region of Turkey has seen the worst violence in two decades after the PKK abandoned a two-year ceasefire in July and resumed its armed campaign for autonomy. The government says more than 5,000 militants and almost 400 soldiers and police officers have been killed.

Opposition parties estimate that between 500 and 1,000 civilians have also been killed in the fighting, largely focused in densely populated urban centres. Meanwhile, two Turkish journalists accused of spying remained defiant on the second day of their trial Friday, in a case seen as a test of press freedom under the increasingly autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of leading opposition daily Cumhuriyet, and Erdem Gul, his Ankara bureau chief, are also charged with revealing state secrets over a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms to rebels in Syria.

The journalists could face life in prison, but a defiant Dundar voiced optimism they would be found not guilty at the Istanbul criminal court.

“We will win. We have always won throughout history,” the bespectacled editor told reporters. “We think the laws will show we are right and we will be acquitted.”

The prosecution has sparked outrage among opposition and rights groups in Turkey as well as in the West, where it is seen as proof of Erdogan’s determination to silence his opponents.

Almost 2,000 people have been prosecuted for “insulting” him since the former premier became president in August 2014, Turkey’s justice minister said in March.

US President Barack Obama on Friday said he was troubled by Turkey’s clampdown on press freedom, the day after meeting his Turkish counterpart at the White House.

“It’s no secret that there are some trends within Turkey that I have been troubled with,” Obama said.

“I think the approach they have been taking toward the press is one that could lead Turkey down a path that would be very troubling.”

Erdogan sparked fresh controversy on Thursday, when his security detail clashed with the media at the Brookings Institute in the US capital.

One of the guards aimed a chest-high kick at an American reporter attempting to film the harassment of a Turkish opposition reporter.

Turkish security also tried to keep out two Turkish journalists, one from the opposition daily Zaman that has been seized by the government, prompting a tense standoff with Brookings staff.

“We have increasingly seen disrespect for basic human rights and press freedom in Turkey,” Washington’s National Press Club president Thomas Burr said.

Turkish police officers carry the coffins of four colleagues during a funeral ceremony at the Kocatepe Mosque in Ankara, Turkey on April 1, a day after seven police officers were killed in an explosion caused by a bomb-laden car in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir. The explosives

detonated as a vehicle carrying special forces and riot police passed by. (AP) An Afghan laborer (left), helps a man with his handy cart to cross a road which is covered by water after few days rainstorm in Kabul, Afghanistan on April 2. Kabul Afghanistan’s major cities do not have

canalization system for rain and flood water. (AP)