Article

2004-03-10 Europe

Istanbul Governor: Assailants Managed To Explode Four Bombs

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Posted by Steve 2004-03-10 10:18:43 AM|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Details from CNN:
Two men attacked a security guard and sprayed a restaurant in the lodge with gunfire before detonating an explosive device Tuesday night, Istanbul Gov. Muammer Guler said. "Two assailants shot the guard in his feet and raked the restaurant of the lodge with gunfire, then detonated bombs," Guler told reporters. "One terrorist and one waiter was killed, the second terrorist is injured with his arm ripped off and his guts spilled out."
Turkish media said the second attacker could not be taken to hospital for more than an hour while explosives strapped to his body were removed, Reuters reported.
CNN's Matthew Chance in Istanbul said early indications were that Tuesday night's blast was not linked to al Qaeda. "The crude nature of the devices used by the apparent suicide bombers ... indicates to police in the initial stages of their investigation that it doesn't seem to have any al Qaeda link," Chance said. Local media were reporting that the alleged attackers botched the job and that they may have been members of a previously unknown radical Islamist group.
"We don't think it is likely this attack was the work of al Qaeda or Hizbullah," the Hurriyet daily newspaper quoted an unnamed senior security source as saying, according to Reuters.
Hizbullah is a reference to a radical Turkish Islamist group not connected with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Reuters said. "It could have been carried out by inexperienced militants of a newly formed radical religious group ... If the bomb had been better made, the whole building could have blown up," the source told Hurriyet.
The Milliyet daily quoted security experts as saying the explosive device was a pipe-style bomb of the kind typically used by another Turkish militant group called IBDA-C (the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders' Front), Reuters reported.

Posted by Steve 2004-3-10 12:49:20 PM|| 2004-3-10 12:49:20 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 More from al-Guardian: The wounded assailant, who identified himself as Abdullah Islam, shouted "Down with the Israeli lodge" as he was taken to hospital, leading Turkish newspapers Milliyet and Hurriyet reported today. NTV quoted the police as saying Mr Islam was an Afghan.

Posted by Steve 2004-3-10 12:55:32 PM|| 2004-3-10 12:55:32 PM|| Front Page Top

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