Turkish authorities claimed to have foiled a probable suicide attack by a suspected Kurdish militant in Istanbul on Saturday as the military stepped up bombing raids on rebel hideouts in northern Iraq.
Police arrested a woman in her 30s in the heart of Turkey’s largest city who they said had been faking pregnancy and was carrying 8.8kg of explosives as well as several detonators.
The amount of material the suspect was carrying suggested she was preparing an attack on a scale as “murderous” as the twin bombings in Istanbul in July that killed 17 people, provincial governor Muammer Guler told reporters.
Police believed the planned attack would have been a suicide bombing “because of the belt she was wearing,” Guler said.
The governor said police had established the woman belonged to the “separatist terrorist organization,” a reference to the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which was also blamed for the July attacks.
The arrest of the would-be attacker in Istanbul’s Sisli district came after Turkish jets bombed Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq overnight.
The Turkish military said 31 PKK positions in the Harkurk border area had been successfully hit in the bombing raids before they were then targeted with artillery fire.
It was the sixth such air raid since Oct. 3 when PKK rebels attacked a Turkish border post resulting in the deaths of 17 soldiers and at least 23 militants, Turkish figures showed.
The Turkish parliament on Wednesday extended the government’s mandate to order strikes against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq for a second year.
Under the mandate that parliament renewed, the Turkish army carried out several air strikes in northern Iraq as well as a week-long ground incursion in February.
The operations were backed by intelligence from the US, which is nevertheless worried that a large-scale Turkish intervention could destabilize Iraq’s relatively calm north.
Turkish officials charge that about 2,000 PKK rebels are holed up in the autonomous enclave, where they allegedly enjoy free movement, are tolerated by the region’s Kurdish leaders and obtain weapons and explosives for attacks in Turkey.
Iraqi authorities have repeatedly pledged to curb the PKK, but say the group takes refuge in mountainous regions that are difficult to access.
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