TURKEY: Investigators sifting through the wreckage of the Beth Israel synagogue in Istanbul yesterday found the body of an elderly woman, pushing the death toll in Saturday's double car bombing up to 24.
Turkey's authorities confirmed that suicide bombers were responsible.
"Footage from Neve Shalom synagogue's security cameras \ as the pick-up truck passes, it explodes," the Turkish Interior Minister, Mr Abdulkadir Aksu, said. "These were definitely suicide attacks."
NTV news quoted an anonymous police source as saying that the suicide bombers had been identified. One of them, Azad Ekinci, who is known to have fought in Bosnia and Chechnya, had previously been detained by Turkish police on suspicion of belonging to an extremist Islamist organisation.
Most of the victims were Muslims - passers-by or local shop owners - but Turkey's 25,000-strong Jewish community, the vast majority of whom live in Istanbul, knows it was the target.
"The message could not have been clearer," says Mr Rifat Bali, historian and author of two books on Turkey's Jews.
A Jewish spokesman, Mr Silvyo Ovadyo, said the community lived with the threat of attacks. "We've increased security massively over the past 20 years, but there's not a great deal you can do to stop two suicide bombers."
Experts now fear synagogues across Europe are potential targets for terrorists.
In Istanbul, Jews are still coming to terms with the implications of the attacks. Mr Bali said a mass exodus of Turkish Jews was unlikely, although he expected repercussions.
"Quite apart from the human cost of the attacks, this is a terrible tragedy for the community," he said. "In the last decade or so, it had become less defensive... After this weekend, the barriers will go up again."
Largely the descendants of the Sephardic community expelled from Spain in the late 15th century, Turkey's Jewish community has close ties with Israel.
"There are four times more Turkish Jews in Israel than there are in Turkey," said local columnist Mr Sami Kohen. "Pretty much every Jewish family in Istanbul has relations there."
But while the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Silvan Shalom, who visited Istanbul on Sunday, blamed the attacks on "anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic" sentiment, many people in the city are more cautious.
If the terrorists were looking for a community that reflected the views of Israeli Prime Minister Mr Ariel Sharon's administration, they came to the wrong address, says resident Nino Debohar. "Jews in Turkey may be orthodox in their rites but, in political terms, the vast majority of the community is liberal."
Mr Kohen is equally convinced the attacks will not persuade Turkey to change its traditionally pro-Israeli stance. "The effect will be the very opposite if only in the sense that security exchanges in the two countries' fight on terrorism will increase," he says.