Bomb explosions rocked two small Istanbul hotels and a gas plant in apparent terrorist strikes yesterday that killed two people and injured nine others, police said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Kurdish rebels could be behind the attacks, which came within hours of the arrest on Monday night of four Kurdish militants in the city.
PHOTO: AFP
Islamic and leftist militants are also active in the city.
The Kurdish rebels, battling Turkish troops in the southeast for autonomy, have intensified attacks lately. The rebel group, KONGRA-GEL, had threatened to target the country's tourism industry and infrastructure when it broke a unilateral ceasefire on June 1, saying Turkey had not responded in kind.
Private NTV television said the Kurds captured on Monday were allegedly preparing large-scale attacks in Istanbul.
Tayfun Demiroren, an official at the liquefied petroleum gas plant on the outskirts of Istanbul, said two bombs had been placed under storage tanks. The explosions, half an hour apart, followed shortly after an anonymous bomb threat, police said.
There were no casualties at the plant, where cooking gas canisters were filled, and a gas leak had been brought under control, Demiroren said.
Two earlier explosions rocked inexpensive hotels in the city at around 2am, police said.
Workers at the Pars hotel in the Laleli district, where inexpensive hotels and clothing stores cater to Eastern European tourists, said they received an anonymous call saying there was a bomb in a room only 10 minutes before the explosion, the news agency Anatolia reported. The two dead, an Iranian and a Turk, were killed at the Pars hotel, police said. Thirty-seven guests were staying at the hotel.
At the second target, the Star Holiday Hotel in the Sultanahmet area, site of the Ottoman Topkapi Palace, glass and chunks of concrete littered the streets behind the hotel.
"It appears to be a terrorist attack," Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah told Anatolia.
Police said there were injured at both hotels. Among them were two Dutch tourists, a Ukrainian and two Chinese tourists. Seven of the injured have been released from hospital, Anatolia said.
Police cordoned off the area around the Star Holiday Hotel, only a few hundred meters from the Byzantine former church Saint Sophia and the Sultanahmet or Blue Mosque. A forensic police team was behind the hotel photographing damage.
"There was a huge explosion and the glass started shattering," said Umut Akgul, who had been visiting a friend who works at the Star Holiday Hotel at the time of the blast. Akgul said he ran to the back of the three-story hotel and started to help evacuate tourists after the explosion, which ripped off the exterior walls of the top two floors.
Security concerns in Turkey have been heightened since last November, when four suicide truck bombings blamed on the al-Qaeda terrorist network killed more than 60 people in Istanbul.
The blasts occurred a few kilometers from the hotel where the US Olympic men's basketball team is staying during the final stop of its pre-Olympic tour. The team toured Topkapi Palace on Monday, guarded by a large contingent of police. They were scheduled to play Turkey in an exhibition game last night.
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