At
least 13 soldiers were killed and 56 were wounded when a car bomb hit a
bus carrying off-duty military personnel in the central Turkish city of
Kayseri.
The attack comes one week after a twin bombing targeted police personnel in Istanbul.
“The bus was full of soldiers going on their weekend leave,” said Al
Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul. “The soldiers in the
bus are from the commando brigade
Turkish authorities have so far detained seven people and are searching for another five in relation to the attack, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said.
Saturday’s blast is likely to further anger the Turkish public, who are frustrated by a string of deadly bombings this year, several of which have been claimed by Kurdish fighters, including last week’s Istanbul bombings which killed 44 and wounded more than 150.
INTERACTIVE: Timeline of attacks in Turkey
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak likened the attack to last Saturday’s deadly violence outside the stadium of Istanbul soccer team Besiktas, later claimed by an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
“The car bomb attack resembles the Besiktas attack in terms of its style,” he told a group of reporters, adding the incident would not put Turkey off of its goal of fighting the group.
In a statement, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a “separatist terrorist organisation” was responsible for the attack, adding that such attacks were not independent of developments in Iraq and Syria.
Erdogan frequently uses the term “separatist terrorist organisation” to refer to the PKK, which is considered a “terrorist group” by the United States, Turkey and the European Union.
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