REYHANLI, Turkey: Car bombs killed 43 people and wounded many more in a Turkish town near the Syrian border yesterday and the government said it suspected Syrian involvement.
The bombing increased fears that Syria’s civil war was dragging in neighbouring states despite renewed diplomatic moves towards ending two years of fighting in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.
The bombs ripped into crowded streets near Reyhanli’s shopping district in the early afternoon, scattering concrete blocks and smashing cars in the town in Turkey’s southern Hatay province, home to thousands of Syrian refugees.
Restaurants and cafes were destroyed and body parts were strewn across the streets. The damage went at least three blocks deep from the site of the blasts.
President Bashar Al Assad’s administration was the “usual suspect” in the attacks, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said. “We know that the people taking refuge in Hatay have become targets for the Syrian regime,” Arinc said in comments broadcast on Turkish television. “We think of them as the usual suspects when it comes to planning such a horrific attack.”
Another deputy prime minister, Besir Atalay, was quoted by NTV as saying initial findings suggested the attackers came from inside Turkey, but had links to Syria’s intelligence agency. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Atalay said 43 people had been killed, while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the toll could rise. Officials said more than 100 people were injured, many of them critically.
Erdogan said the bombings might have been related to Turkey’s own peace process with Kurdish militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party. He said the blasts could also have been aimed at provoking sensitivities in a region that is home to so many Syrian refugees. Turkey is sheltering more than 300,000 Syrians.
Protests erupted in Reyhanli after the blasts, with some locals blaming Syrians there for bringing violence over the frontier and smashing their car windows, while others railed against Turkey’s foreign policy, chanting for Erdogan to resign. The Syrian National Coalition said the attacks were a failed attempt to “destroy the brotherhood” between Syrians and Turks and were intended as a punishment for Turkey’s support of the uprising.
The United States condemned the attacks and vowed support in identifying those responsible, while Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius voiced “full solidarity” with Turkey.
Reuters
