Car bomb in Turkey wounds 16

Sixteen people, most of them policemen and soldiers, were injured in a powerful car bomb blast in Izmir.

Turkish police forensic officers investigate the site after a car explosion injured at least 16 people, mostly police officers, in western Turkish city of Izmir.

IZMIR // Sixteen people, most of them policemen and soldiers, were injured in a powerful car bomb blast today targeting Turkish security forces in the western city of Izmir, officials said. Police did not say who could be behind the blast, but a cabinet minister hinted that Kurdish rebels waging a 24-year armed campaign against Ankara - which has claimed some 37,000 lives - were to blame. The car, parked on the side of a road in a residential area in the Aegean city, exploded at around 7.45am just as a military car and a police bus were approaching it, the Izmir governor's office said.

"The explosion occurred in a vacant car left at the blast scene. We believe the blast was the result of plastic explosives set off by remote control," Governor Cahit Kirac said. A spokesman from the governor's office said the explosion left seven policemen, three soldiers, including a colonel, and six civilians wounded. Television footage taken straight after the blast showed dark smoke coming off a burning piece of wreckage in the middle of the road in front of a police minibus as police cordoned off the area and warned civilians to stay away.

The windows of nearby buildings and cars were shattered in the blast, which locals described as being very powerful. The transport minister Binali Yildirim suggested that the blast was the work of the "terrorist organisation" - the official jargon used for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Yildirim also said that PKK rebels were focussing on a bombing campaign in urban centres since military operations had crippled their activities in the country's southeast.

The PKK has been fighting for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish East and South-east since 1984 in a conflict that has killed more than 37,000 people. Izmir, Turkey's main port on the Aegean coast, has a sizeable population of Kurdish immigrants and was targeted in the past by PKK rebels. In October, two bombs exploded several hours apart in a shopping area in Izmir, killing one and injuring seven others.

Today's explosion came two days after a suspected suicide bomber pursued by police detonated a car in the southern city of Mersin, killing himself and wounding 12 officers. Police have yet to make an official statement. * AFP