Warning to US after embassy attack
Suicide bomber provokes outrage and caution to Americans to be wary of large crowds. By Suzan Fraser.
IN THE second deadly attack on a United States diplomatic post in five months, a suicide bomber struck the US embassy in Ankara yesterday, killing a Turkish security guard in what the White House described as a terrorist attack.
Washington immediately warned Americans to stay away from all US diplomatic facilities in Turkey and to be wary in large crowds. Turkish officials said the bombing was linked to Leftist domestic militants.
The attack drew condemnation from Turkey, the US, Britain and other nations, and officials from Turkey and the US pledged to work together to fight terrorism.
‘‘We strongly condemn what was a suicide attack against our embassy in Ankara, which took place at the embassy’s outer security perimeter,’’ said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said police believed the bomber was connected to a domestic Leftist militant group. Carney, however, said the motive for the attack and who was behind it were not known.
A Turkish television journalist was seriously wounded in the blast in the Turkish capital, and two other guards had lighter wounds, officials said.
The state-run Anadolu news agency identified the bomber as Ecevit Sanli. It said the 40-yearold Turkish man was a member of the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, which has claimed responsibility for assassinations and bombings since the 1970s. The group has been designated a terrorist organisation by the US but had been relatively quiet in recent years.
Hillary Clinton, in her farewell speech to US State Department staff moments after she formally resigned as secretary of state, said ‘‘we were attacked and lost one of our foreign service nationals’’.
She said she had spoken with US ambassador Francis Ricciardone, ‘‘our team there and my Turkish counterpart. I told them how much we valued their commitment and their sacrifice’’.
The
US
embassy
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in Ankara is heavily protected and located near several other embassies, including those of Germany and France.
US diplomatic facilities in Turkey have been targeted previously by terrorists.
In 2008, an attack blamed on al Qaeda-affiliated militants outside the US consulate in Istanbul left three assailants and three policemen dead.
On September 11, 2012, terrorists attacked a US mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The attackers were suspected to have ties to Islamist extremists.
Yesterday’s bombing occurred at a security checkpoint at the side entrance to the embassy, which is used by staff.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said a man detonated a suicide vest at the checkpoint on the outer perimeter of the embassy compound.
‘‘He came to this first point of access to the compound . . . where you have to have your ID checked, you have to go through security,’’ Nuland said.
The guard who was killed was standing outside the checkpoint, while the two wounded guards ‘‘ were standing in a more protected area’’, Turkish Interior Minister Muammer Guler said.
‘‘The level of security protection at our facility in Ankara ensured that there were not significantly more deaths and injuries than there could have been,’’ Nuland told reporters in Washington.