The U.S. Embassy in Turkey issued a series of security warnings days ahead of the vehicle bomb that exploded in central Ankara on March 13 killing at least 34 people.
Advertisement
The explosion happened in Guven Park in the Kizilay district, a key transport hub and commercial area.
“There is a vehicle that is mostly destroyed”.
Turkish Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu told a news conference that 30 people were killed at the scene and four died later in hospital.
Dogan Asik, 28, said the attacker was driving a auto that sped up and ran into the municipal bus he was riding in at the time. “People who carried out this attack will never succeed”, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said.
That attack was claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), linked to the PKK, which said it was revenge for operations by the Turkish military in the southeast of the country. Turkey, the USA and the European Union classify the PKK as a terrorist organization.
No group has yet claimed responsibility.
In a tweet late Sunday, Cameron said: “My thoughts are with all those affected”.
Just ahead of the attack, curfews were also declared for two areas of southern Turkey, imposed “due to escalating terror activity in the region” and to ensure the “security of citizens’ lives and property”, according to the news agency, quoting statements from the governors’ offices of Hakkari and Mardin provinces.
The attack drew worldwide condemnation in statements issued by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Russian President Vladimir Putin, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, among others. US State Department spokesman John Kirby said: “We reaffirm our strong partnership with our North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally Turkey in combating the shared threat of terrorism”.
The Anadolu Agency said nine F-16s and two F-4 jets raided 18 positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK in the northern Iraq, including the Qandil mountains where the group’s leadership is based.
Rescuers carry a victim on a stretcher after a blast in Ankara.
Erdogan made it clear his government would use its military to prevent further attacks and vowed to bring “terrorism to its knees”. The two wars are becoming ever more closely intertwined, with Turkey firing artillery into Syria to halt advances there by the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which is allied with the PKK, against the Islamic State and Syrian rebels.
Advertisement
Last October saw the worst single terror attack in Turkish history when Islamist terrorists killed more than 100 pro-peace activists in front of the main train station in Ankara.
