Three killed and dozens hurt in Turkish bomb attacks

A police officer holds back residents while standing near a bodyfollowing a blast in the southern Turkish coastal city of Antalya…

A police officer holds back residents while standing near a bodyfollowing a blast in the southern Turkish coastal city of Antalya. REUTERS/Dogan News Agency

Three people died and dozens were injured in a blast in Turkey's Mediterranean city Antalya today, the fifth bomb to hit the country in less than 24 hours.

Two witnesses said by telephone from Antalya they heard a loud explosion, which broke windows, shattered glass, and sparked a fire at a shopping area in the centre of the city, one of Turkey's most popular tourist destinations.

"A parked motorbike next to a tramway had exploded and pieces of the motorbike were shattered all around. A man who was a street vendor was then dead," said a shaken local businessman, who declined to be named.

Local police said two people were killed in the attack and a large number were injured. Public hospital officials told Reuters seven people were admitted to two hospitals.

READ MORE

State-run Anatolian news agency said a nearby street had been shut off to traffic because a suspicious bag was found. A bomb squad was on its way to the scene.

The Antalya blast came less than 24 hours after three bombs in the coastal tourist resort of Marmaris injured 21 people within 15 minutes and another device in Istanbul wounded six people earlier in the evening.

The 10 Britons and six Turks in Marmaris were wounded when a bomb placed under a seat in a minibus exploded on a street crowded with bars and restaurants around midnight.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility.

"Who did this? What do they want from these people?" Suzanne Bedford, whose two grandchildren were being treated at the Ahu Hetman hospital in Marmaris, asked an official.

Local authorities pledged to find the culprits, suspected of belonging to the banned separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a more than 20-year campaign to carve a homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeast.