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World|life|December 11, 2016 / 03:59 PM
Turkey says Kurdish militants may be behind soccer bombing that killed 38

AKIPRESS.COM - Turkey said on Sunday that Kurdish militants may be responsible for the two bombs that killed 38 people and wounded 155 in what looked to be a coordinated attack on police outside a soccer stadium in Istanbul after a match between two top teams, Reuters reports.

The blasts on Saturday night - a car bomb outside the Vodafone Arena, home to Istanbul's Besiktas soccer team, followed by a suicide bomb attack in an adjacent park less than a minute later - shook a nation still trying to recover from a series of deadly bombings this year in cities including Istanbul and the capital Ankara.

There was no claim of responsibility, but Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said early indications pointed to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has carried out a three-decade insurgency, mainly in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast. Ten people have been detained so far, he said.

"The arrows point at the PKK," Kurtulmus told CNN Turk in an interview. "There will be an announcement once the investigations are over. We cannot say anything definite for now."

He said Turkey's allies should show solidarity with it in the fight against terrorism, a reference to the long-standing disagreement with fellow NATO member Washington over Syria policy. The United States backs the Syrian Kurdish YPG in the fight against Islamic State. Turkey says the militia is an extension of the PKK and a terrorist group.

Flags were at half mast, and Sunday was declared a day of national mourning, the prime minister's office said in a statement. A march against terrorism had been called for noon local time (0900 GMT) in Istanbul, Kurtulmus said.

President Tayyip Erdogan cancelled a planned trip to Kazakhstan, his office said. Erdogan described the blasts as a terrorist attack on police and civilians. He said the aim of the bombings, two hours after the end of a match attended by thousands of people, had been to cause maximum casualties.

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