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Istanbul bombs kill 14 on eve of political case |
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Written by Reuters
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Sunday, 27 July 2008 18:23 |
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Bombs killed 14 people and wounded 140 in Istanbul late on Sunday, just hours ahead of a court case over banning the ruling party that has plunged Turkey into political turmoil.
Officials said one loud blast brought people into the streets of a busy shopping area, then a larger bomb hidden in a rubbish bin exploded a few minutes and a few metres away, tearing through the crowds.
"This is a terror attack," city governor Muammer Guler told reporters at the scene, in a pedestrianised street where families gather in the evenings to dine, sip tea and stroll.
Television showed ambulances taking away the wounded in the Gungoren district of Turkey's biggest city, near the main airport. Among the rubble and glass of broken shop windows, men carried away the wounded and children cried.
"First a percussion bomb exploded and then a bomb in a garbage container," Deputy Prime Minister Hayati Yazici told reporters.
One witness said: "Tens of people were scattered around. People's heads, arms, were flying in the air."
Turkish media put the toll at 14 dead and 140 wounded. Earlier, officials confirmed 13 dead and more than 100 wounded.
The Constitutional Court will deliberate on whether the AK Party has engaged in Islamist activities and should be closed.
The court can find the AK Party not guilty and dismiss the case, or convict it and either fine or ban the party and some of its leaders, in which case the government will fall and early parliamentary elections be called, possibly in November.
The case has entrenched the opposition between a government which, though rooted in political Islam, denies the charge of trying to introduce Islamic rule, and an establishment which sees itself as the guardian of secularism.
"I condemn those who carried out this bombing, which shows us terrorism's inhumane desire for cruelty and violence without discriminating between men and women, young, old and children," President Abdullah Gul said in a statement.
"We received nearly 30 very heavily wounded people," said Abdullah Toker, a manager at Gungoren Kolon Hospital.
Several groups, including Kurdish separatists, far-left groups and Islamists, have carried out bomb attacks in Istanbul in the past.
Turkey has been plunged into political uncertainty by a court case over banning the ruling party that begins on Monday.
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