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Suspected suicide bomb on minibus kills 4 in Turkey

A suicide bomber is believed to have triggered a blast which ripped through a minibus in a western Turkish resort yesterday, killing four people and injuring 14, officials and news reports said.

Television footage of the scene showed the top of the minibus had been blown off by the force of the blast, which occurred around 10:30am as the vehicle travelled past a square in the town of Kusadasi on the way to a beach.

Kusadasi, some 70km from the port city of Izmir, is popular with Turkish and foreign tourists. Three foreign tourists were among the dead and five foreigners were critically injured in the explosion, a doctor at Kusadasi State Hospital said, on condition of anonymity. The five injured tourists were transferred to Izmir for treatment, the doctor added.

The NTV news channel said authorities believed a female suicide bomber was killed in the attack and police suspected plastic explosives were used.

"There is no clear information at the moment but we are considering all possibilities," local administrator Ali Baris said when asked whether a suicide bomber had caused the explosion.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Kurdish rebels have recently carried out bomb attacks in Aegean resort towns. A Kurdish rebel group calling itself the Kurdistan Liberation Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in the nearby resort of Cesme on July 10 in which 20 people were injured.
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