Turkey Says Radical Group May Be behind Twin Attacks
A Turkish minister said Wednesday that twin attacks in Ankara may have been the work of the same radical Marxist group which claimed a suicide bombing against the U.S. embassy in February.
One person was slightly wounded in simultaneous grenade and rocket attacks late Tuesday against the justice ministry and the headquarters of the ruling ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
"The choice of targets... could suggest it is an act by the DHKP-C," Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said at a press conference, referring to the fiercely anti-U.S. and anti-government Revolutionary People's Liberation Front.
"There is still no certainty, but clues, traces were found yesterday which suggest that this terrorist organisation could have carried this out," he added.
Arinc said the DHKP-C had suffered a setback in recent weeks with the arrest of hundreds of alleged militants in large police operations across Turkey.
"We want to get across the message: We are still standing," Arinc added.
Arinc also said the attacks could be an attempt to derail peace talks aimed at ending the 29-year armed Kurdish insurgency in Turkey.
The outlawed DHKP-C, which has waged a string of attacks over the past few decades that have left dozens of people dead, claimed the February 1 bombing on the US embassy in Ankara.
It also claimed a suicide bombing that killed a police officer in Istanbul in September.
Source: Agence France Presse
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