Gunshots were fired at a bus carrying Turkey’s Fenerbahce SK soccer team back from their 5-1 victory over Black Sea side Caykur Rizespor on Saturday, the club said, injuring the driver, but leaving the players unhurt.
Several shots were aimed at the bus as the Turkish Super Lig league leaders passed through the northeastern town of Trabzon following their away game in nearby Rize, club vice president Mahmut Uslu said.
The driver managed to bring the bus to a stop despite being wounded in the face and was immediately taken to hospital in a police car, said Uslu, who was on the bus at the time.
Photo: AFP
He accused the attackers of trying to “crash the bus and kill the players.”
“It’s unbelievable,” he told Turkish television.
None of the players were injured in the attack, which happened as they were returning to Istanbul.
Pictures of the bus showed a damaged windshield on the driver’s side.
Trabzon governor Abdil Celil Oz confirmed the gun attack on the bus and said that the driver’s life was not in danger.
“At first we thought stones had been thrown at the bus, but police investigators at the scene have concluded it was an armed attack,” he told the television station 360.
The governor said he received a telephone call from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a supporter of the Istanbul club, asking him about the investigation into the attack.
The Turkish Football Federation issued a statement condemning the incident “in the strongest possible terms” and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
The players and their entourage were later met by hundreds of supporters in the club’s blue-and-yellow strip at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen International Airport, along with Fenerbahce president Aziz Yildirim, images broadcast on Turkish news channels showed.
Turkish Minister of Sports Cagatay Kilic described the attack as “cowardly and barbaric,” adding that the championship would go ahead as planned, though Fenerbahce yesterday called for the suspension of the league.
“We consider that as long as this attack is not solved in a way that satisfies Fenerbahce and public opinion, a suspension of the championship is inevitable,” the Istanbul club said on its Web site. “Blood ran and football was silenced. Finding and punishing the culprits is of vital importance for Fenerbahce.”
It comes at a moment of high tension in Turkey after a week of political violence ahead of elections in June.
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