ANKARA - A Turkish official said Wednesday that a suicide bomber suspected of belonging to a separatist Kurdish rebel group was behind a powerful explosion in downtown Ankara that killed six other people.
Ankara Governor Kemal Onal told reporters that police found body parts belonging to a 28-year-old man with a criminal record who was not listed among those killed and injured in Tuesday's blast.
The blast ripped through the busy commercial district of Ulus during the evening rush hour, injuring 100 people, among them eight Pakistani nationals in town to attend an international defence industry fair.
Speaking after a meeting of the country's top anti-terror body, Onal said the suspect, identified as Guven Akkus, carried out the attack with plastic explosives wrapped around his body.
"The type of explosive used and the method of the attack tally with those of the separatist terror organization", Onal said, employing the official jargon for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The PKK has in the past used suicide bombers in its bloody, 22-year campaign for self-rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.
However police are yet to determine whether Akkus, who has an arrest record and served two years in jail, was a PKK member, Onal said.
"Our findings so far show that he acted alone, but we are pursuing the investigation," he said.
Speaking shortly before the governor, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the attack came as the Board for Struggle Against Terrorism evaluated reports that the PKK could launch bomb attacks.
"The board, which held one of its routine meetings three days ago, was concerned that the terrorist organization might carry out such attacks in major cities and tourist regions as we enter summer," Erdogan told a forum of the influential TUSIAD businesmen's association in Istanbul.
Other than attacks on security forces in southeast Turkey, Kurdish militants are also blamed for a series of bomb attacks nationwide.
A group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) claimed responsibility for a string of bombings against civilian targets last year and threatened to continue hitting the tourism sector, which attracts millions of holidaymakers every year.
Turkish officials say TAK is a front for PKK attacks on civilian targets; the PKK claims TAK is a splinter group over which it has no control.
The Turkish army fighting the PKK regularly seizes large amounts of plastic explosives it says the militants bring across the border into Turkey from their bases in northern Iraq.
The European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, on Wednesday condemned the "horrible and cowardly attack".
"The European Commission expresses its solidarity with Turkey in its efforts to fight terrorism, which is a common concern for the EU and Turkey," EU Enlargament Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement in Brussels.
Turkish newspapers Wednesday raised the possibility that army chief Yasar Buyukanit may have been targeted by the attack, which occurred shortly before the start of an official reception at a museum a few hundred yards away for delegations from 48 countries attending the armaments fair.
Buyukanit and top military commanders would have used the road where the blast occurred to arrive at the dinner at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, they said.
More than 37,000 people have been killed since the PKK, outlawed by Turkey and much of the international community, took up arms against the Ankara government.
Turkey has long pressed the United States and Iraq to stamp out PKK rebel bases in northern Iraq and has threatened a crossborder operation to do so itself if there is no action from Washington and Baghdad.
The explosion came as Turkey prepares for early general elections scheduled for July 22 to defuse a political crisis between secular and Islamist forces over who the country's next president should be.
05/23/2007 11:27 GMT