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| Europe |
| Car bomb attack on Turkish governor kills 5 |
| 2004-07-02 |
| A car bomb ripped through a street in the eastern Turkish town of Van on Friday, killing five people and wounding 24 in an apparent attack on the local governor, who was unhurt, officials said. The bomb, planted in a parked car in the center of town and detonated by remote control, revived security worries in Turkey after a series of explosions before and during a NATO summit in the country’s largest city Istanbul this week. There was no claim of responsibility but a police spokesman said officials believed the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) was behind the bombing. Anatolian news agency reported him as saying bomb disposal experts defused a second bomb in the area. The blast shattered windows in surrounding buildings and tore holes in the bodywork of the official black Mercedes car carrying Hikmet Tan, governor of an impoverished, mountainous province bordering Iran. Tan, who was on the way to his office, told CNN Turk television: "I was going to work when there was a large explosion around 9:15 a.m. (0215 EDT). All windows were shattered around the car ... Nothing happened to me, the bodyguard or driver." Those killed by the blast were pedestrians on their way to work and shopkeepers. Some of the injured were seriously hurt, a police official said. Television pictures showed men lifting a body from the middle of the road and the burning remains of a vehicle by a pool of water gushing from burst water pipes. Amid security jitters, a railway official said a train traveling between the capital Ankara and Istanbul had been halted on Friday after a bomb tip-off. Passengers were taken off the train for half an hour but no device was found. The police spokesman also confirmed a newspaper report that police had found and defused a bomb in a multi-storey car park at Istanbul airport two days before the summit. The newspaper Sabah said a radical leftist group planted the 11 lb of explosives in a tire at the airport as part of a planned attack on President Bush, who arrived in the city on June 27, the paper said. On Tuesday a small bomb exploded on a plane at Istanbul airport, injuring three cleaners, hours before Bush flew from the airport after the summit. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |