Turkiye blames Istanbul blast on Kurdish group
O Six killed in bombing, 46 suspects detained
ANKARA: Turkiye yesterday accused the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) of carrying out a deadly bomb attack in Istanbul, saying a Syrian woman was in custody, suspected of planting the device.
The bombing killed six people and wounded 81 others in the popular shopping street of Istiklal Avenue on Sunday shortly after 4pm (9pm in Malaysia).
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the bombing a “vile attack” that had the “smell of terror”.
A nine-year old girl and her father, as well as a 15-year-old girl and her mother, were among those killed in the attack.
There has been no claim of responsibility. Istanbul police said yesterday that 46 people had been detained in total.
The government accused the PKK of carrying out the explosion shortly before the president landed in the Indonesian resort island of Bali for the G20 summit.
Police footage shared with Turkish media showed a young woman in a purple sweatshirt being apprehended in an Istanbul flat.
“The person who planted the bomb has been arrested,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in a statement broadcast by the official Anadolu news agency early yesterday.
Turkish police said the chief suspect is a Syrian woman working for Kurdish militants.
“According to our findings, the PKK terrorist organisation is responsible,” Suleyman said.
The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara as well as its Western allies, has kept up a deadly insurgency for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkiye since the 1980s.
PKK-affiliated Kurdish militants control most of northeastern Syria.
“We believe that the order for the attack was given from Kobane,” Suleyman said, referring to a city in Syria near the Turkish border.
Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told Turkish news channel A Haber that a woman was “sitting on one of the benches for more than 40 minutes, and then she got up”, leaving a bag.
“One or two minutes later, an explosion occurred.”
Images posted on social media showed the explosion triggered panic, with people running in all directions.
“I was about 50m away. Suddenly there was the noise of an explosion. I saw three or four people on the ground,” said witness Cemal Denizci, 57.
“People were running in panic. The noise was huge. There was black smoke.”