| | | | Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said he could not rule outa role by Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, blamed for attacks on other Jewish targets around the world in the past 18 months. The attackers could have been suicide bombers or may have detonated devices in the vehicles by remote control, he said. “In both cases, vans were driven by the attackers towards their targets. We believe they contained the same kind of explosives, they are the same kind of terror attacks,” he said. Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag said 24 people had been killed and 303 wounded in the two attacks, which hit the central Neve Shalom synagogue — the “Oasis of Peace” — and another, Beit Israel, in the Sisli district around 9:30 a.m. (0730 GMT).
The Antolian news agency said one policeman was among the dead.
A radical Turkish Islamist group, widely believed to be backed by Iran, claimed responsibility but Aksu said he doubted a local group could mount such a large-scale operation. “It is difficult for any Turkey-based organisation to carry out an attack of this magnitude,” he said at the scene.
SMOKE DURING PRAYERS
The chief rabbi of Turkey, Yitzhak Haleva, whose son was injured in one explosion, told Israel Radio they was praying in the Sisli synagogue when it hit. “All the windows blew open and I was left standing in shock in the middle of heavy smoke.”
At the central Neve Shalom synagogue the scene was similar. Injured people covered in blood were carried on stretchers from around the building, the target of a 1986 attack by Palestinians in which 22 people were killed.
Predominantly Muslim Turkey is a key NATO ally of the United States and recently offered to send troops to help secure neighbouring Iraq, though it later abandoned the plan due to strong opposition from Iraq’s U.S.-appointed Governing Council. Turkey also has warm diplomatic and military relations with Israel. The Jewish state swiftly condemned the “criminal terror attacks” in Istanbul.
A senior Israeli security source told Reuters in Jerusalem the blasts seemed to be the work of an al Qaeda affiliate, possibly seeking to target both arch-foe Israel and the moderate Muslim Turkish government, a NATO ally of the United States. Jewish sites have been targeted in recent attacks blamed on militants linked to al Qaeda — notably in Casablanca in May, a Tunisian synagogue bombed in April 2002 and Israeli tourists in the Kenyan seaside city of Mombasa last November.
Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer issued a statement condemning the bomb blasts as did numerous world governments.
RESPONSIBILITY CLAIM
Turkish Islamist group IBDA/C — the Islamic Great EasternRaiders/Front — claimed responsibility in a call to Turkey’s semi-official Anatolian news agency. Edi Baruh, a 30-year-old Turkish Jew said his father-in-law Sabi, who was at the Neve Shalom synagogue when the bombexploded, had told him the synagogue contained up to 300 people instead of the usual 20 to 30 because it was a bar-mitzvah, a coming of age ceremony for a Jewish boy. Istanbul, as the capital of the Ottoman empire, has a long history of Jewish presence, notably bolstered after Spain expelled Jews in 1492.
About 30,000 live there now, some of whom still speak a mediaeval form of Spanish known as Ladino. “Everyone in Turkey is treated equally, my neighbours are all Muslim,” Baruh said.
Gul said the attacks would not effect government policy. “We will continue our struggle with strong determination against terror,” he said.
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