Five dead in explosion on minibus in Turkish resort

British woman and Irish teenager among victims; PKK denies responsibility

Turkish citizens pay their respects at the site of Saturday’s bomb blast in the popular seaside resort Kusadasi, western Turkey. Authorities ruled out the participation of a suicide bomber in the attack, saying the device had been planted on a minibus. Suspicion initially fell upon the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) but it has denied any involvement in the attack.

ISTANBUL/ANKARA (Combined reports) - A Turkish official said yesterday that a package bomb, not a suicide attacker, caused an explosion that killed five people a day earlier at a popular resort on the Aegean coast.

Authorities stepped up security at resorts to try to prevent a repeat of Saturday’s blast, whose victims included a British woman and an Irish teenager, officials said.

The Foreign Office in London identified the Briton killed in the blast as Helen Bennett, 21, while the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin named the Irish victim as 17-year-old Tara Whelan. At least 12 people, including five Britons, were injured in the blast.

Bomb experts completed on-scene investigations in the beach town of Kusadasi and returned to Ankara, the Turkish capital, to evaluate the evidence, Aydin province’s governor Mustafa Malay said.

“Right now, we have two possibilities,” Malay said. “It’s possible the explosive was timed or that it was remote-controlled. There was no suicide bomber.”

The bomb was placed under a seat near the back of the minibus, Malay said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blast, which tore off the top of a minibus carrying vacationers to the beach, leaving a palm tree-lined street strewn with twisted metal and the bodies of the dead and wounded.

Police and paramilitary personnel with bomb-sniffing dogs began stopping and searching all vehicles entering the Aegean resort towns of Bodrum and Marmaris after the bombings on Saturday, security officials said. Dozens of additional police officers were also sent as reinforcements from Mugla and Ankara provinces.

A local official in Kusadasi said yesterday that similar measures were being taken there, and that a specialized bomb team was investigating the blast.

Although suspicion immediately fell on Kurdish guerrillas, Turkey’s main rebel group quickly denied responsibility for the explosion, and Turkish investigators would not say whether they had zeroed in on any suspects.

A top commander of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, Zubeyir Aydar, condemned the Kusadasi attack in a statement Saturday to the Germany-based Mezopotamya News Agency, which often carries rebel statements. The PKK’s military wing also issued a statement through Mezopotamya yesterday saying it had nothing to do with the bombing.

Meanwhile, 10 armed PKK rebels were killed in clashes with the Turkish army in southeastern Sirnak province, the provincial governor’s office said yesterday. A statement carried by the Anatolia news agency said a PKK militant “responsible for mining operations” in the region was among the dead.

It said the clash occurred during a military operation from July 13 to 16 in a zone where the borders of three southeastern provinces — Sirnak, Hakkari and Van — merge, but did not specify the exact date.

Anatolia said fighting erupted when “contact was made with a group of terrorists... (who) responded with fire to a call for surrender.” The Sirnak governor’s office said the PKK militants were in possession of a sniper rifle, a machine gun, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, seven AK-47 assault rifles, 18 hand grenades and 25 kilograms (55 pounds) of C3 and C4 plastic explosive. (AP, AFP)