Tag Archives: Istanbul

Car bomb targeting police kills 11, wounds 36 in Instanbul

Fire engines stand beside a Turkish police bus which was targeted in a bomb attack in a central Istanbul district

By Humeyra Pamuk and Osman Orsal

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A car bomb ripped through a police bus in central Istanbul during the morning rush hour on Tuesday, killing 11 people and wounding 36 near the main tourist district, a major university and the mayor’s office.

The car was detonated as police buses passed, Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin told reporters, in the fourth major bombing in Turkey’s biggest city this year.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Kurdish militants have staged similar attacks on the security forces before, including one last month in Istanbul.

Security concerns were already hitting tourism and investor confidence. Wars in neighboring Syria and Iraq have fostered a home-grown Islamic State network blamed for a series of suicide bombings, while militants from the largely Kurdish southeast have increasingly struck in cities further afield.

President Tayyip Erdogan vowed the NATO member’s fight against terrorism would go on, describing the attack on officers whose jobs were to protect others as “unforgivable”.

“We will continue our fight against these terrorists until the end, tirelessly and fearlessly,” he told reporters after visiting some of the injured in a hospital near the blast site.

Sahin said the dead included seven police officers and four civilians and that the attack had targeted vehicles carrying members of a riot police unit. Three of the 36 wounded were in critical condition, he said.

The blast hit the Vezneciler district, between the headquarters of the local municipality and the campus of Istanbul University, not far from the city’s historic heart. It shattered windows in shops and a mosque and scattered debris over nearby streets.

“There was a loud bang, we thought it was lightning but right at that second the windows of the shop came down. It was extremely scary,” said Cevher, a shopkeeper who declined to give his surname. The blast was strong enough to topple all the goods from the shelves of his store.

The police bus that appeared to have borne the brunt of the explosion was tipped onto its roof on the side of the road. A second police bus was also damaged. The charred wreckage of several other vehicles lined the street.

GUNSHOTS

Several witness reported hearing gunshots, although there was confusion as to whether attackers had opened fire or whether police officers had been trying to protect colleagues.

“We were told that it was police trying to keep people away from the blast scene,” said Mustafa Celik, 51, who owns a tourism agency in a backstreet near the blast site. He likened the impact of the explosion to an earthquake.

“I felt the pressure as if the ground beneath me moved. I’ve never felt anything this powerful before,” he told Reuters.

U.S. Ambassador John Bass condemned the “heinous” attack and said on Twitter the United States stood “shoulder to shoulder” with Turkey in the fight against terrorism.

Turkey has suffered a spate of bombings this year, including two suicide attacks in tourist areas of Istanbul blamed on Islamic State, and two car bombings in the capital, Ankara, which were claimed by a Kurdish militant group.

That has hit tourism in a nation whose Aegean and Mediterranean beaches usually lure droves of European and Russian holidaymakers. Russians stopped coming after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane over Syria last November.

The number of foreign visitors to Turkey fell by 28 percent in April, the biggest drop in 17 years.

“Business hasn’t been very good anyway. We’re now expecting fast check-outs and we think it will get worse,” said Kerem Tataroglu, general manager of the Zurich Hotel, less than 300 meters from where Tuesday’s blast happened.

While attacks by Islamic State have tended to draw more attention in the West, Turkey is equally concerned by the rise in attacks by Kurdish militants who had previously concentrated for the most part on the southeast.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an armed insurgency against the state since 1984, claimed responsibility for a May 12 car bomb attack in Istanbul that wounded seven people. In that attack, a parked car was also blown up as a bus carrying security force personnel passed by.

(Additional reporting by Murat Sezer, Ayla Jean Yackley, Ece Toksabay; Writing by Daren Butler and David Dolan; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Andrew Heavens)

First U.N. global aid summit falls short as crisis mounts

Houses are seen partially submerged in floodwaters in Asuncion

By Dasha Afanasieva

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A global summit called by the UN secretary general next week to address failings in humanitarian aid provision risks falling short of its ambitions, boycotted by a big aid agency and snubbed by Russia’s president.

Government and business leaders, aid groups and donors gather in Istanbul for the two-day summit on Monday to try to develop a more coherent response to what UN chief Ban Ki-moon has called the worst global humanitarian situation since World War Two.

The United Nations estimates that more than 130 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance and that less than 20 percent of the $20 billion needed to fund that is covered.

The summit – billed as the first of its kind bringing together governments, civil society and the private sector – aims to mobilize funds and get world leaders to agree on issues ranging from how to manage displaced civilians to renewing commitments to international humanitarian law.

But branding it a “fig-leaf of good intentions”, Medecins sans Frontieres – involved in the planning over the past 18 months – pulled out in early May, saying it had lost hope that the meetings could address weaknesses in emergency response.

It said it could not see how the summit could help address the needs of patients and medical staff facing violence in Syria, Yemen and South Sudan, displaced civilians blocked at borders in Jordan, Turkey and Macedonia, or refugees and migrants trying to settle in Greece and Australia.

Seventy-five hospitals managed or supported by MSF were bombed around the world last year, in what the agency said were violations of the most fundamental rules of war.

Some 6,000 participants from 150 UN member states are expected to take part in the Istanbul talks, according to summit spokesman Herve Verhoosel, including 57 heads of state or government.

“In the context of this very broad and wide coalition, it is very unlikely that you could come down to very precise commitments,” said Ivan Zerzhanovski, a co-ordinator at the United Nations Development Programme in Istanbul.

But he said the purpose of the summit was to “set the stage for change” and provide a framework for concrete measures.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the only G7 leader so far publicly confirmed as planning to attend.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be there. Moscow will instead send its deputy minister for emergencies, foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday, adding Russia had serious concerns about the summit and had told U.N. member states it would not be bound by its commitments.

“Russia has on numerous occasions presented its proposals and remarks to the organizers of the summit. However they were simply ignored,” she told a weekly briefing. Among other issues, Moscow was concerned about a plan to limit the veto powers of Security Council members in certain situations, Zakharova said.

MSF said the non-binding nature of commitments at the summit would in any case mean states could not be held accountable. Russia and the Syrian government, which is backed by Moscow, stand accused of widespread rights violations in Syria’s war including attacks on medical facilities, which Moscow denies.

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Louis Charbonneau in New York and Lidia Kelly and Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Editing by Nick Tattersall)