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Three killed in blast in eastern Turkish city |
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Written by Reuters
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Thursday, 09 March 2006 06:19 |
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Three people were killed and 16 wounded on Thursday in an explosion possibly caused by a suicide bomber in the eastern Turkish city of Van, officials said.
Police said the blast was near the office of Van's governor. They said an investigation was under way into the cause of the explosion but gave no further information.
"We think it may have been a suicide bomber targeting a vehicle belonging to the municipality in the center of Van at 9.06 am (0706 GMT)," the deputy governor of Van, Mustafa Yavuz, told CNN Turk television.
He added that two of the dead had been identified but the identity of the third remained unclear.
Tensions have been running high in Van, a city with a mainly ethnic Kurdish population near the Iranian border.
A Van-based state prosecutor triggered a crisis this week between Turkey's powerful military and the civilian authorities by accusing a top general of abusing his position and setting up an illegal group he said was trying to foment unrest in the Kurdish southeast in order to harm Ankara's EU membership bid.
His claims have outraged the military and embarrassed the government, which has distanced itself from the prosecutor's allegations and defended General Yasar Buyukanit, who heads Turkey's land forces.
Buyukanit, tipped to become the next chief of the military general staff in August when incumbent Hilmi Ozkok is due to retire, served in southeast Turkey between 1997 and 2000.
Turkish troops and security forces have been battling separatist Kurdish rebels in the region since 1984 in a conflict which has claimed more than 30,000 lives.
There is much less violence now than at the height of the conflict in the 1980s and 1990s. But a series of bomb blasts in the region in recent months has stirred fears the conflict could be rekindled.
The European Union, which began membership talks with Turkey last October, has urged Ankara to do more to relieve poverty in the southeast and to bolster the cultural rights of its large Kurdish population.
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