2023-10-01 19:32:59
According to the Interior Ministry, the Turkish capital Ankara was rocked by a bomb attack on Sunday morning. Two terrorists in a van were involved in the attack. One of the two blew himself up in front of the entrance, the other was killed with a shot in the head, said Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya. Two police officers were slightly injured in an exchange of fire following the explosion. Both are undergoing treatment.
Erdoğan on attack: “The last twitch of terror”
Numerous police and rescue vehicles were on duty. The center was largely cordoned off. The Attorney General’s Office in Ankara imposed a news blackout shortly following the attack. The Ministry of the Interior called for images from the site to be deleted from the internet. It opened an investigation into violations, Minister Yerlikaya announced.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described the attack as the “final throes of terror,” according to Anadolu. The “villains” have not achieved their goals and will never achieve them, said the Turkish head of state in parliament in Ankara.
Report: PKK claims responsibility for bomb attack in Ankara
The banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed responsibility for the attack. “A sacrificial operation was carried out once morest the Turkish Interior Ministry by a team subordinate to our Brigade of the Immortals,” the PKK told the Kurdish news agency ANF.
After the attack, Turkish warplanes attacked suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq. The Turkish Defense Ministry announced on Sunday evening that around 20 targets that were attributed to the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) had been destroyed. This included caves and rebel camps.
Thousands of people have been killed in the decades-long conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state. Ankara regularly carries out military operations once morest the PKK in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. This in turn repeatedly carries out attacks, especially on Turkish security forces. But civilians also die. Turkey accuses the PKK of endangering national security and unity through terror. The PKK argues that it is fighting, among other things, for the “rights of the Kurds” and once morest oppression. In 2015, a peace process between Türkiye and the PKK failed.
Start of the new legislative period
The attack occurred on a symbolically important day: Parliament is ringing in the new legislative period following the summer break. The attack reportedly took place in close proximity to the parliament building.
On the agenda – although without a specific date – is, among other things, the vote on Sweden’s accession to NATO, which Turkey has been blocking for months. Ankara calls on Sweden to take tougher action once morest the PKK. According to state broadcaster TRT, the Turkish military’s operations in Iraq and Syria will also be voted on soon.
The explosion came almost a year following the attack on a busy pedestrian street in central Istanbul on November 13, 2022, which killed six people and injured 81. The Turkish government blamed Kurdish activists for this.
Ankara has been spared attacks in recent years. The last attack there so far was in 2015, when more than 100 people were killed in bomb explosions at the main train station. The Islamic State is said to have been responsible for this.
In the video: Suicide attack in Ankara
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