ISTANBUL (AFP) - At least 18 people including two police officers were injured when a bomb went off near a concert venue in the southern Turkish city of Mersin, CNN-Turk news channel reported.
The police officers and one other person were seriously wounded in the blast, the channel reported, adding that the concert, which had been attended by some 30,000 people, was drawing to an end at when the bomb exploded.
Anatolia news agency meanwhile reported that 14 people had been injured, one of them seriously in the blast.
Mersin Governor Atilla Osmancelebioglu said that police had carried out controlled explosions on two suspect packages found near the site, but did not confirm whether the packages had indeed contained explosives, Anatolia reported.
The governor said security forces had launched a large-scale operation to track down those responsible for the explosion, vowing they would be swiftly brought to justice.
City mayor Macit Ozcan earlier told NTV television that around 10 people had been wounded in the blast, which he said was apparently caused by a bomb hidden under a police vehicle outside the venue.
Turkey has been targeted by a dozen bomb attacks, several of them deadly, since the devastating suicide strikes on two synagogues and the British Consulate in Istanbul killed a total of 63 people last November.
In the most recent incident, blamed on Kurdish rebels, bomb attacks on two Istanbul hotels left people two dead and 11 injured last month. Other attacks have been blamed on militants linked to the Al-Qaeda network.