Separatist Kurdish militants carried out the two bomb blasts in Istanbul last week that killed 17 people, Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay said on Saturday, announcing several arrests.
“This was an inhumane act by the bloody separatist terrorist organization,” Atalay told reporters, using the official description of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Ten suspects were handed over to the judicial authorities, Atalay said, adding that they comprised most of those involved in last Sunday’s blasts, including those who “personally took part” in the attacks.
Eight of the suspects were later charged with membership in the PKK and held in detention, while the remaining two were released, the Anatolia news agency reported.
The police consider the incident to be resolved as the findings leave “no room for hesitation,” Atalay said at the Istanbul police headquarters, where weapons and other implicating materials seized in the suspects’ houses were displayed.
Two bombs, planted in rubbish containers, exploded about 10 minutes apart last Sunday in a crowded pedestrian street in the popular Gungoren neighborhood, on Istanbul’s European side.
The first bomb drew a large crowd of onlookers and the second, more powerful blast killed 17, including five children and a pregnant woman.
Twenty-seven of the 154 people who were injured remained in hospital, but none was in a life-threatening condition, Atalay said.
Among the eight suspects charged were two men, identified as Huseyin Tureli and Ziya Kirac, who witnesses said behaved suspiciously in the street shortly before the explosions, Anatolia said.
Prosecutors will now draw up an indictment detailing the charges before a trial can begin.
In the course of the investigation, Atalay said, the police also established that a bomb blast that wounded 10 people at an outdoor cafe in Istanbul on June 15 was the work of the same assailants.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described the Gungoren blasts as “the cost” of an intensified military crackdown against the PKK, both inside Turkey and in northern Iraq, where the rebels take refuge.
Following the blasts, Turkish warplanes bombed Tuesday a PKK base in the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq, a major PKK stronghold, killing an unspecified number of militants.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Ankara and much of the international community, has denied responsibility for the bombings, the deadliest attack on civilians in Turkey since 2003 when two sets of twin suicide bombings, blamed on al-Qaeda, claimed 63 lives in Istanbul.
Some analysts have said that the PKK leadership is in disarray and cannot control radical cells.
In January, the PKK apologized for a car bombing in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir that killed seven people, saying that it was the work of militants who acted without the leadership’s approval.
The PKK took up arms for self-rule in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person