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Eight arrested after blasts rock building in Istanbul

Three explosions shook an Istanbul municipal building yesterday, injuring one person — the second attack in the Turkish city in less than two weeks, officials and media reports said.

One blast occurred in a garbage-collecting truck in the car park of the building in Uskudar, on Istanbul’s Asian side. The other two ripped through a neighboring cemetery, Uskudar mayor Mehmet Cakir told Anatolia news agency.

CNN Turk news channel said hand grenades or small bombs designed to scare rather than kill are thought to have been used. Police immediately sealed off the area.

Two people on a motorbike were seen fleeing the scene, CNN Turk said.

The wounded man suffered a minor leg injury, NTV television reported.

Two bombs, blamed on separatist Kurdish rebels, ripped through a crowded street in Istanbul’s European side on July 27, killing 17 people and leaving about 150 injured.

Eight people accused of belonging to the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were subsequently arrested in connection with the blasts.

Leftist and Islamist radicals have in the past also carried out bomb attacks in Turkey’s biggest city.

Meanwhile, a Turkish official told Anatolia news agency yesterday that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline (BTC) would remain shut for about 15 days after an explosion sparked a fire in a section in eastern Turkey.

The blast occurred late on Tuesday in a pump at a section near the eastern town of Refahiye, in Erzincan Province.

The fire was likely to continue burning for another two days until the oil remaining in the pipe runs out, an official from Turkey’s state-run oil and gas company BOTAS told Anatolia.

Repair work would then start and was expected to take between 10 and 15 days, the unnamed official said, adding that the cause of the explosion could be investigated only after the fire was extinguished.

“No trace suggesting a sabotage has been found so far, but the cause will become clear after the fire is over,” the official said.

Local authorities ruled out the possibility of a sabotage, saying that a fault in the system had been detected before the blast.

However, the PKK claimed responsiblity for the explosion in a statement on its Web site.

The BTC pipeline was inaugurated in 2006, carrying oil from the Caspian Sea fields to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, from where tankers transport the crude to Western markets.

The closure of the pipeline has boosted oil prices, while BP said the BTC partners had declared force majeure on exports, freeing themselves from contractual obligations.

The blaze was expected to be put out yesterday, after which damage on the pipeline could be assessed. There was no timetable for its reopening, a Turkish Energy Ministry source said.
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