Police in Turkey have arrested three people, including a veiled woman, in connection with twin car bomb attacks that devastated two Istanbul synagogues on Saturday, killing 20 people and wounding 300, the Hurriyet daily’s website reported on Sunday.
The intelligence and anti-terrorist services brought the three in for questioning on possible links with Saturday’s attacks, according to the report.
Their nationalities were not released, nor was there any information on which, if any, organisation they belong to. Officials had earlier speculated that the attacks had been carried out by al-Qaeda.
After the attacks, an unidentified caller to the Anatolia news agency claimed they were the work of a radical home-grown group called the ”Islamic Front of Raiders of the Great Orient”.
Turkish and Israeli investigators were still searching through twisted metal and rubble early on Sunday outside the synagogues.
Working by spotlight, police and intelligence officials worked to piece together Saturday’s nearly simultaneous attacks by two vehicles outside the synagogues in Istanbul.
One of the blasts tore apart the facade of Neve Shalom — Istanbul’s biggest synagogue and the symbolic centre of the 25 000-member Jewish community in this mostly Muslim nation.
Five kilometers away in an affluent neighbourhood, the other blast hit the Beth Israel synagogue.
A Turkish radical Islamic group quickly claimed responsibility, but authorities questioned whether it was capable of carrying out such carefully coordinated attacks, and suspicions fell on the al-Qaeda terrorist network.
Turkish officials said intelligence suggested al-Qaeda may have been planning attacks in Turkey.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the attacks appeared to be suicide bombings, the semiofficial Anatolia news agency reported.
”We were informed that both vehicles paused and exploded in front of the synagogues,” Gul said. The drivers of the vehicles were believed to be at the wheels at the time of the blasts, he added.
Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said ”moving pickup trucks could have been used” in the attacks. He had earlier said police were investigating whether the blasts were set off by suicide bombers, a timer or remote control.
Security-camera footage showed a driver parking a red Fiat in front of Neve Shalom, then getting out and walking away from the car before it exploded, police told Anatolia. But it was not clear if that car was involved in the attack.
Israel’s ambassador to Turkey said he also suspected al-Qaeda involvement, Anatolia reported.
Aksu said it was clear that the same group carried out both attacks, but did not name any particular group.
Gul also said it was too early to name the perpetrators, but said the attack was ”linked to international terrorism”, Anatolia reported.
”This incident has moved beyond the national dimension, I believe, to the international,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Turkey, a secular nation that is Nato’s only Muslim member and a close United States ally, enjoys warm relations with Israel. Turkey and Israel have carried out joint military exercises, and Turkey in 1948 became the first Muslim country to recognise the Jewish state.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was scheduled to fly to Istanbul later on Sunday and tour the scenes of the attacks and visit the wounded. An Israeli team was also helping to investigate in Istanbul.
In all, six Jews were confirmed dead in the attacks and about 80 others were injured. The others injured were mostly residents and shopkeepers in nearby buildings and passers-by.
Among those injured were Turkey’s Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva, who suffered a slight hand injury, and his son Yosef, who underwent plastic surgery for more than six hours on his face and neck.
Doctors said the son’s condition was not life-threatening.
A blanket of glass, soot and twisted metal covered the street in front of Neve Shalom synagogue late on Saturday. Nearly all nearby shops were severely damaged. Windows hundreds of meters away were also shattered.
Police examined a hole able to fit a full-grown man outside the synagogue as authorities piled burned metal and tires — apparently from the vehicle that exploded — in a heap.
Halil Keles, an electrician who was working in his shop at the time of the blast, said debris from the building fell on to him, putting a bloody gash in his head and injured his hand.
”I thought it was an earthquake,” he said. ”There was dust and smoke everywhere. I couldn’t see a thing.”
The attack in Neve Shalom came as hundreds gathered to celebrate a bar mitzvah, the coming-of-age ceremony for a young man. About 300 worshippers were inside at each synagogue at the time of the attacks.
Al-Qaeda is thought to have carried out an April 2002 vehicle bombing at a historic synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba that killed 21 people, mostly foreign tourists.
A senior Israeli government source said it was too early to jump to conclusions, but it appeared that this type of sophisticated attack must have been at least coordinated with international terror organisations.
”The method of operation leads to the assumption — a quite solid one — that [the bombs] were the making of al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, two organisations that specialized in this type of assault,” the source said on condition of anonymity.
But Boaz Ganor, an Israeli counterterrorism expert, said: ”At this time [there is] no indication of al-Qaeda involvement.”
In 1986, a Palestinian gunmen killed 22 worshippers and wounded six during a Sabbath service at Neve Shalom, one of the synagogues targeted on Saturday. That prompted tighter security at the synagogue. — Sapa-AP