Turkey: Two suicide bombers driving pick-up trucks packed with 400 kilograms of ammonium sulphate-based explosive partially destroyed two synagogues in central Istanbul on Saturday morning, killing 23 people and wounding over 300. From Nicholas Birch In Istanbul.
Most of the dead were passers-by, or tradesmen working in nearby shops. Of the 22 people now identified, six are known to have been among an estimated 500 people celebrating Sabbath in the two synagogues.
London-based al-Qudsal-Arabi newspaper said yesterday it had received a statement allegedly by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network claiming responsibility for the devastating attacks on the two synagogues.
Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of al-Quds, al-Arabi,, told Arab satellite television Al Jazeera from London, the statement was sent in an email from an Al Qaeda division called Brigades of the Martyr Abu Hafz al-Masri.
"The statemnt said that they carried out the operations after they found out that Mossad agents were working at the synagogues and therefore they bombed them," he said.
Political editor of the paper Khaled Elshami said the statement also said Al Qaeda was planning more attacks around the world, specifically with car bombs, targeting Britain, Italy, Australia and Japan.
"It could have been far worse", says Mr Silvyo Ovadyo, a spokesman for Turkey's 25,000-strong Jewish community, mostly the descendents of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in the 15th century. "But security panels built in both synagogues after 1986, when Palestinian terrorists killed 22 people, partially stopped the force of the blast." It was originally thought that cars parked near the synagogues had been the cause of the blasts. Following reports in Turkish papers claiming that bodies carrying triggering devices had been discovered at the crime scenes, though, the authorities confirmed yesterday that this had been a kamikaze attack.
"We were informed today that both vehicles paused and exploded in front of the synagogues", Turkish foreign minister Mr Abdullah Gul told reporters yesterday.
Police refused to confirm reports that tests on tissue sample taken from the bomb sites could have belonged to two Middle Eastern men.
Suicide bombing is unheard of in Turkey, despite its long experience fighting Kurdish separatist terrorism in the southeast of the country.
Proof, for Mr Abdullah Gul at least, that "this attack was clearly linked to an international terrorist organisation". Citing the sophistication of the attack, with the two bombers blowing themselves up at a five-minute interval in different parts of central Istanbul, a senior Israeli government source agreed with him.
"The method of operation leads to the assumption - quite a solid one - that [the bombs] were the making of Al Qaeda or Hezbollah, two organisations that specialised in this kind of assault," he said.
Istanbul police confirmed that three men and one woman arrested on Saturday afternoon had been cleared and released.
Liberal daily Radikal reported that both Mossad and the CIA had warned Turkey twice this year that Al Qaeda operatives could be preparing an attack in the country. Osama bin Laden's organisation has plenty of reasons for attacking Turkey.
A secular Muslim country with close links to Al Qaeda's arch-enemies Israel and the US, it is the antithesis of everything bin Laden and his followers are fighting for.
Yet, in an interview with Israel's Army Radio yesterday during his visit to Istanbul to show his solidarity with the bombing victims, Israeli foreign minister Mr Silvan Shalom was guarded. "From what is being said here, the direction [of inquiries] is more towards Al Qaeda, but this has not been finalised," he said.
Turkish experts have their doubts too. "If Turkey had sent soldiers to Iraq as planned, this attack would have been comprehensible," says terrorism expert Mr Umit Ozdag.
"It is possible that the attack was planned before it became clear two weeks back that we would not be going in, but that seems unlikely."
Like Mr Ozdag, foreign policy analyst Mr Cengiz Candar is quick to point out that Turkey's relations with Israel have been strained recently. Returning from Russia via Turkey earlier this month, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's request for a meeting with his Turkish counterpart was refused. "The present government's Islamist roots and its connections with a radical grassroots mean that its relations with Israel, and particularly with Sharon are always going to be very, very chilly," he says.
But if the terrorists who blew themselves up on Saturday thought they could deflect Turkey from its secular pro-Israel, pro-Washington stance, Mr Candar adds, they were seriously miscalculating.
"Turkish foreign policy has always been very conservative. In all likelihood the attacks will merely strengthen Ankara's resolve to follow the same time-hallowed line", he says.