Ankara: A woman blew herself up and killed
two other people on Saturday near a ruling party building in the
eastern Turkish town of Bingol, the local governor said.
The attack, the first of its kind in a year, took place
near the provinvial headquarters of the Islamist-rooted
Justice and Development Party (AKP), Mustafa Hakan Guvencer
said.
Several people were also wounded in the attack, which came
as eastern Turkey was winding up rescue efforts a week after a
devastating earthquake and two days after the end of punishing
military raid against Kurdish separatists.
The Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), whose decades-old
struggle against the central government escalated in recent
weeks, has carried out such attacks in the past but there was
no immediate claim for Saturday's suicide blast.
Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin, quoted by the Anatolia
news agency, had earlier reported a toll of 10 wounded and
stressed that the local AKP office was not specifically
targeted.
"It happened near the provincial headquarters but it
wasn't directly targeted," he said.
The last such attack took place in November 2010 in
Istanbul, where a bomber blew himself up on the central Taksim
square, wounding 32 people.
The attack in Bingol comes two days after the Turkish
military wrapped up a week-long air and land operation against
the PKK in south-eastern Turkey and across the Iraqi border.
The sweeping operation came after a series of PKK attacks
against government forces caused the Turkish army's biggest
loss in almost two decades.
The PKK, listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and
much of the international community, took up arms for Kurdish
independence in southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking a
conflict that has claimed some 45,000 lives.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, October 29, 2011, 19:23