Two people killed and 11 hurt in hotel blasts

BOMBS exploded simultaneously at two small hotels yesterday, killing two people and wounding 11 in an attack that Turkey's interior minister said might be the work of Kurdish separatists.

One of the hotels was only a few miles from where the US Olympic men's basketball team is staying during the final stop of its pre-Olympic tour. The team decided to proceed with an exhibition game last night against Turkey's national team, US team spokesman Brian McIntyre said.

Two more explosions caused damage but no casualties at a liquefied petroleum gas plant on the outskirts of Istanbul, and Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said police were investigating to determine they were linked to the hotel blasts.

Mr Aksu said Kurdish rebels could be responsible for the hotel attacks, but added that police were also investigating other possibilities. Islamic and leftist extremists have staged attacks previously in Turkey.

One group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, which is named for an al-Qaida commander killed in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for yesterday's attack in a posting on a web site known for publishing messages from Islamic militants. "Istanbul is the opening for the bloody war we promised the Europeans," the statement said.

The explosions came only hours after the arrest of four Kurdish militants in the city, officials noted. Private NTV television said the militants were preparing large-scale attacks in Istanbul.

The dead were identified as a Turk and an Iranian, and authorities said all but two of the injured were tourists - four Spaniards, two Dutch, a Ukrainian and two Chinese. Nine of the wounded had been treated and released from the hospital. Workers at the Pars hotel in the Laleli district, where inexpensive hotels and clothing stores cater to eastern European tourists, said they received an anonymous call warning of a bomb in a room only 10 minutes before the explosion there, the Anatolia news agency reported. That blast caused the two deaths and some injuries.

The other bombing was at the Star Holiday Hotel, just a few hundred yards from the Byzantine former church Saint Sophia and the Sultanahmet, also known as the Blue Mosque.

"There was a huge explosion and the glass started shattering," said Umut Akgul, who was visiting a friend who works at the Star Holiday. The explosion ripped off the exterior walls of the top two floors of the three-floor hotel, which officials said housed 20 guests. Security concerns in Turkey have been high since last November, when four suicide truck bombings blamed on al-Qaida killed more than 60 people in Istanbul.

In 1996, an underground Islamic group, Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for an arson attack on a hotel in Laleli that killed 17 Ukrainian tourists.