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ANKARA : Sixteen people, most of them policemen and soldiers, were injured in a powerful car bomb blast on Thursday targeting Turkish security forces in the western city of Izmir, officials said.
Police did not say who could be behind the blast, but a cabinet minister hinted that Kurdish rebels waging a 24-year armed campaign against Ankara - which has claimed some 37,000 lives - were to blame.
The car, parked on the side of a road in a residential area in the Aegean city, exploded at around 7:45 am (0445 GMT) just as a military car and a police bus were approaching it, the Izmir governor's office said.
"The explosion occurred in a vacant car left at the blast scene. We believe the blast was the result of plastic explosives set off by remote control," Governor Cahit Kirac was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as saying.
A spokesman from the governor's office said the explosion left seven policemen, three soldiers - including a colonel - and six civilians wounded.
"One of the injured soldiers, a private, is in a critical condition and is being operated on," said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Television footage taken straight after the blast showed dark smoke coming off a burning piece of wreckage in the middle of the road in front of a police minibus as police cordoned off the area and warned civilians to stay away.
The windows of nearby buildings and cars were shattered in the blast, which locals described as being very powerful.
Transport Minister Minister Binali Yildirim suggested that the blast was the work of the "terrorist organisation" - the official jargon used for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Anatolia reported.
The agency cited Yildirim as saying that PKK rebels were focusing on a bombing campaign in urban centres since military operations had crippled their activities in the country's southeast.
The PKK has been fighting for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish east and southeast since 1984 in a conflict that has killed more than 37,000 people.
The PKK routinely targets Turkish security forces and the media recently reported that the rebels were planning bomb attacks in retaliation for Turkish air strikes on their hideouts in neighbouring northern Iraq.
Izmir, Turkey's main port on the Aegean coast, has a sizeable population of Kurdish immigrants and was targeted in the past by PKK rebels.
In October, two bombs exploded several hours apart in a shopping area in Izmir, killing one and injuring seven others. Police said at the time that it suspected the attack to be the work of the PKK.
Thursday's explosion came two days after a suspected suicide bomber pursued by police detonated a car in the southern city of Mersin, killing himself and wounding 12 officers.
Police have yet to make a statement on who was behind the attack. - AFP/ms
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