Turkish Police Foil Bomb Attack In Capital

By Gareth Jones

ANKARA - Turkish police foiled a bomb attack in Ankara on Tuesday, the sixth anniversary of 9/11 attacks on the United States, averting what officials said would have been a disaster for the capital.

Ankara governor Kemal Onal said police had found a vehicle packed with explosives in a multi-storey car park in a central district of the city of four million. Shops and offices in the area were quickly evacuated.

"The police efforts prevented a possible disaster ... It is too early to say who was behind this but the bomb was big and I do not want to think what might have happened if it had gone off," Onal told reporters.

Private broadcaster NTV said police had found about 300 kg of explosives in the vehicle, a stolen mini-bus parked on the second floor of the car park.

The state Anatolian news agency said it took experts three hours to defuse the bomb.

Kurdish separatists, ultra-leftists and Islamist militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in recent years.

CNN Turk quoted police as saying the device found resembled those used in al Qaeda-backed suicide bomb attacks in November 2003 on two synagogues, the British Consulate and the HSBC bank in Istanbul. More than 60 people died in those attacks.

But the governor's office later said the explosives found seemed to point towards the involvement of Kurdish separatist rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Turkish authorities have also blamed the PKK for a suicide bombing at a central Ankara shopping centre in May that killed at least six people and injured dozens. The PKK denied any involvement in that attack. 

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