An explosion rocked the Turkish embassy in The Hague Tuesday and fire broke out after a man left a package on the premises, officials said. Turkey’s ambassador to the Netherlands said the blast was caused by a device left by a man who had entered the chancellery asking for information. The blast damaged a door and the man ran away, ambassador Tacan Ildem told Turkish television. "A man coming to the embassy to get some information set off an explosive which caused a fire. The man, wearing a black jacket, managed to escape after a struggle with security guards. The man spoke Dutch and is not a Turkish national," Ildem was quoted as saying on a Dutch television Web site. Embassy officials found a second package in the same area and bomb disposal experts were tackling it, a Turkish foreign ministry official said. Interior Ministry spokesman Frank van Beers said he understood one person had been arrested and another person had jumped out of an embassy window.
Embassy officials told Reuters no one had been injured. The embassy was cordoned off by police but not evacuated. Witnesses saw a bomb squad expert clad in a bombproof suit entering the back of the embassy and a bomb-detection robot was being prepared to go in. Kurdish separatists, far-leftists, Islamists, Armenian and Greek militants have all carried out attacks on Turkish targets since the 1970s.
Gee, a lot of people don’t like you, Murat. |