Turkey is home to a variety of militants, including Kurdish rebels and Islamic extremists, and alleged coup plotters with ties to the secular establishment.Opposition leader Deniz Baykal said security of cials told him the type of bombs used were similar to those used in at-tacks in Ankara and the mostly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir that were blamed on the PKK.
The high level of profession-alism in the Istanbul bombings, apparently designed to in ict
maximum casualties among
civilians, was unsettling.
Authorities said the vast majority of the deaths and in-juries occurred when a curious crowd gathered after the rst, but much smaller blast.
“First, they exploded a per-cussion bomb to grab attention. Then, 10 minutes later, in an-other trash-can, they exploded a fragmentation bomb,” said Hayati Yazici, deputy prime minister.
The Cihan news agency said the second bomb consisted of the same plastic explosive used in a May 2007 suicide attack in An-kara that killed seven people.
Agencies
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