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Second Turkey blast kills three before NATO summit
At least three people were killed and 10 injured when a bomb tore through an Istanbul bus on Thursday two days before President Bush visits Turkey for a NATO summit.
The blast followed a small bomb explosion earlier on Thursday outside the Hilton hotel in Ankara where Bush is due to stay on Saturday when he visits the capital before the Istanbul summit. A leftist group claimed responsibility for that attack.
Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said three people were killed and 10 injured in the bus blast, one seriously.
"The bus was not the target. The bomb was being carried from one place to another," Guler told reporters. "We suspect a Marxist-Leninist group."
Hospital sources also said three people had died.
Guler said the bomber was a woman in her mid-20s who was carrying the bomb in her lap when it exploded outside a hospital in the mainly residential Fatih district of Istanbul.
He said the device was a percussion bomb, which causes a loud bang but usually not much damage.
Percussion bombs are relatively common in Turkey, and it was such a device hidden in a package that caused the earlier blast in the car park of the Hilton Hotel.
Ankara police chief Ercument Yilmaz told CNN Turk two policemen and an unidentified third person were injured in that explosion, which another television station said was claimed by a leftist group called MLKP-FESK.
Turkish markets weakened slightly after the second bomb in one day. The dollar earlier fell a quarter of a centime against the Swiss franc, a traditional safe haven.
DRASTIC SECURITY
Turkey has taken drastic security precautions in Istanbul, Turkey's economic hub, fearing a repetition of four devastating truck bombs there last November that killed more than 60 people. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for those attacks.
The Turkish government, which hosts the NATO summit in Istanbul on June 28-29, offered swift reassurance after the Ankara explosion that security for the summit was sufficient.
"Turkey is a sufficiently strong and secure country. Such incidents happen everywhere, in London, in Paris, everywhere," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters, adding that the Bush visit would go ahead as scheduled.
Bush is due to spend Saturday night in Ankara before talks on Sunday with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Ahmet Necdet Sezer. He flies to Istanbul on Sunday afternoon to attend the two-day NATO summit with some 40 other world leaders.
AWACS surveillance planes will patrol above the city of 10 million people and 24,000 officers will police the streets.
The Bosphorus straits, a key shipping lane, will be closed to oil tankers, the underground rail system will be suspended and whole districts will effectively be sealed off.
After the Ankara blast, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said he was satisfied with Turkey's security measures. "It's a heavy responsibility for our Turkish hosts but they are doing everything they can." Turkish officials say they expect demonstrations in Ankara, Istanbul and other cities in the coming days against both Bush's visit and the NATO summit.
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