Turkey: Bombers detonate explosives after standoff
October 9, 2016
The suicide car bombers kill themselves outside the Turkish capital after police called on them to surrender.
Turkey has faced a series of bomb blasts by fighters from ISIL and the PKK [File: Reuters]
Two suicide car bombers blew themselves up on the outskirts of the Turkish capital Ankara after police called on them to surrender, according to a Turkish official and local media.
Governor Erkan Topaca said the two bombers – a man and a woman – died on Saturday’s incident outside a horse farm, The Associated Press news agency reported.
No one else was wounded in the blasts.
Topaca said the assailants are thought to be linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has carried out a series of suicide car bombings over the past year.
“The materials used, the construction and the way it was planned point to the PKK a little,” he said, according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
The governor said that the suspects were sought by police after a tip from Diyarbakir, a mainly Kurdish province in Turkey’s southeast.
In televised comments, Topaca added that the suspects were a male whom they had identified and a female whose identity they had yet to ascertained.
The PKK has fought a three-decade-old armed campaign, focused in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey, in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.
It is designated a “terrorist” group by Turkey, the United States and European Union.
Violence returned to the region after the collapse of a two-year ceasefire last year.
Turkey has also seen attacks by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group for more than a year.
Saturday’s bombing comes two days before the first anniversary of Turkey’s deadliest attack in its modern history in Ankara which left 103 dead. The attack was blamed on ISIL fighters.
Source: News Agencies
