Suspects arrested over al-Qaida terror bomb attacks

Turkish investigators arrested an undisclosed number of suspects in Istanbul today in the deadly suicide bombings on the British consulate and a London-based bank in which 27 people died and more than 450 were injured.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul confirmed the arrests but declined to give details.

“Some people have been arrested, but it is too early to give information about them,” he told a news conference.

The daily newspaper Hurriyet said police were interrogating seven people in connection with the attack, which killed 27 people in Turkey’s worst-ever terrorist bombing and stood as the highest single-day death toll from terrorism in Turkey since 1977, when gunmen opened fire on leftists and killed 37.

The paper also said police believe they had identified the suicide bombers as two Turkish men with links to the perpetrators of an attack five days earlier at two Istanbul synagogues that killed 23 people.

Turkish security forces were on high alert today. Security was tightened at public buildings and foreign institutions, and Istanbul police were stopping and searching pickup trucks similar to those that shattered the British consulate and the HSBC bank building. British police anti-terrorist experts headed to Turkey to help the investigation.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to defeat the attackers, who struck during the Islamic month of Ramadan.

“Those who bloodied this holy day and massacred innocent people will account for it in both worlds,” he said. “They will be damned until eternity.”

In Washington, US Attorney General John Ashcroft said the attacks bore the marks of an al-Qaida operation.

The attacks raised fears al-Qaida was targeting Turkey, a close ally of the West that has strong ties with Israel and is a rare example of a secular, Muslim democracy.

Istanbul may have been targeted because Turkey was “a successful democracy, it is overwhelmingly Islamic, and in democracy and freedom recently elected an Islamic party”, said Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in Istanbul.

Straw said a decision to warn citizens against non-essential travel to major Turkish cities was based on intelligence reports of a threat of more attacks.

Other nations, including the United States, Germany and Australia, issued similar warnings – prompting fears that drops in foreign investment and tourism could harm the country’s recovery from its worst recession in decades.

The Istanbul stock exchange remained closed today after plummeting 7% before an early shut down after the bombings.

As with the synagogue bombings, most of the victims were Muslim Turks. At least 450 people were injured, said Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu. Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said four of the 16 dead at the consulate were British, including Consul-General Roger Short and his personal assistant Lisa Hallworth.

He also said that the death toll was likely to rise.

Hurriyet quoted police sources as tentatively identifying the two bombers in Thursday’s attack as Turkish men: Azad Ekinci, 27, and Feridun Ugurlu. The pair had earlier been named in Turkish newspaper reports as having links with last Saturday’s synagogue bombings.

Hurriyet said Ekinci and Ugurlu travelled to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on October 28 and identified Ekinci as a schoolfriend of one of the men suspected in the synagogue attacks. Earlier reports said Ekinci had travelled to Iran, received military and explosive training in Pakistan between 1997-99 and fought in Chechnya.

An unidentified caller to the semiofficial Anatolia news agency said al-Qaida and a small militant Turkish group, the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders’ Front, or IBDA-C, jointly claimed responsibility for both sets of attacks.