Turkey arrests suspects

Turkey said yesterday it had arrested several people in connection with twin truck bomb attacks on British targets in Istanbul that killed 27 people, including Britain's top diplomat in the city.

A statement purporting to come from a unit of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network said it carried out Thursday's strikes on the British consulate and the London-based banking giant HSBC, five days after two similar strikes on synagogues here.

"Some people have been arrested but it's too early to give any information about them," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told a news conference, declining to give further details.

The Turkish daily Hurriyet said yesterday that seven people had been arrested over the second pair of blasts, which it said were carried out by Turkish suicide bombers. A spokesman at the Istanbul governor's incident room could not confirm the report.

The twin blasts killed 27 people, including British Consul-General Roger Short, and wounded more than 400 others.

On Saturday two Istanbul synagogues were devastated by suicide truck bombs that killed 25 and wounded 300, making this the worst week of peacetime violence in Turkey's modern history.

Britain has warned more terror attacks may target Turkey, NATO's only Muslim member. Washington has promoted Turkey as a model for a moderate Muslim democracy.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who visited both bomb sites after arriving in Istanbul late on Thursday, said Britain stood side by side with its NATO ally.

"We who represent the civilized world are facing a global threat and we have to deal with it in a global way. This was as much an attack on the Turkish people as it was upon British interests, and we stand together with Turkey in this," Straw said.

A NATO statement in Brussels also voiced its support.

"NATO also expresses its full and unwavering solidarity to its two allies, Turkey and the United Kingdom, which have been targeted in this latest act of terrorism," it said.

A statement apparently from a unit of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, the Abu Hafz al-Masri Brigades, said it had carried out the latest attacks.

Also see Terror tactics shift toward Muslim countries