IZMIR (Turkey), July 17: Turkish police increased security at tourist resorts on Sunday as investigators sifted through the wreckage of a minibus ripped apart by a bomb that killed five people, including a British and an Irish woman.
In the normally bustling Aegean resort of Kusadasi, the site of Saturday’s blast, locals and tourists were uneasy and streets were quieter than normal after the second attack to hit the area in a week at the height of the tourism season.
Hurriyet newspaper said a group called the Kurdistan Liberation Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility for the bombing, but this could not be confirmed. The group has claimed a series of bombings in the last year, including an attack which injured 20 in the same region six days earlier.
British Ambassador Peter Westmacott, visiting the injured in hospital, told reporters authorities believed the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the main guerilla group, had planted the bomb. The PKK condemned the attack, denying involvement.
“Everyone is scared. Nobody wants to go out on to the street,” said Ipek Onturkler, 26, said a nurse on holiday there.
Three Turks — two women and a man — were also killed in the blast, which tore the roof off the minibus as it travelled through the town on the way to a beach on Saturday morning.
Two of them, who media reports said were planning to get married, were buried in separate ceremonies in Izmir on Sunday.
Another 13 people were injured, five of them Britons, who British government sources said were from the same extended family from northeast England.
Provincial governor Mustafa Malay told state-run Anatolian news agency the explosives were hidden in a small bag under one of the seats and were detonated by remote-control or on a timer, not by a suicide bomber as originally thought.
Shopkeepers hung up Turkish flags and minibus drivers tied black ribbons to their vehicles to protest the attack. Locals laid a black wreath at the site of the blast.
The governor said a five-member team of police bomb experts had arrived to reinforce the investigation.
“Work is continuing on the investigation and collecting evidence to find some clues. There will be detailed examination of the evidence,” he said.
He said it was likely C-4 plastic explosives were used and said nobody had been detained in connection with the attack.
Security was tightened at resorts across the region, with police on the look out for suspicious packages and vehicles.
—Reuters