Turkish officials are investigating claims that the al-Qaeda terrorist network was behind the weekend’s bomb blasts outside two Istanbul synagogues that killed 23 people, the prime minister said on Monday.
Two Arabic-language newspapers received separate statements on Sunday claiming Osama bin Laden’s group was responsible for Saturday’s bombings, which Turkish officials said were the work of suicide bombers who set off pickup trucks packed with explosives.
There was no way to independently confirm the authenticity of the claims.
”Our security teams, our intelligence services have to work to determine the extent of truth of the claims,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking to reporters, said of the al-Qaeda claims.
On Monday, Istanbul’s governor, Muammer Guler, said more people had been detained in connection with the attacks, according to private Turk NTV.
”It is not yet definite whether the attackers were Arabs,” NTV quoted Guler as saying. ”But we have important information. Be patient.”
Meanwhile, in a separate probe, police in Istanbul arrested five Kurdish militants, including a pair who allegedly were planning a suicide strike on a police station in the city, Turkey’s semiofficial news agency Anatolia reported Monday, without saying when the arrests were made.
On Sunday, Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said the synagogue attacks likely had international links and discredited earlier claims of responsibility by a tiny Turkish Islamic militant group, saying it did not have the capacity to launch the sophisticated attacks.
”It is very likely that there is an international connection. We are not ruling out any possibility, including al-Qaeda involvement,” he said.
A Turkish intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity on Monday, said the attacks against the synagogues were suicide bombings. He said Turkish security forces had been expecting a suicide strike but said it was very difficult to prevent such an action.
The intelligence officials said one person was still being questioned in Istanbul over the synagogue blasts but that the person didn’t appear to have ties with al-Qaeda.
Turkish newspaper reports on Monday said that four Turks who were questioned and released on Sunday included some who allegedly provided fake passports to three al-Qaeda suspects captured in Turkey last year as they illegally entered from Iran.
The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades claimed Saturday’s attacks in an e-mail to the London-based paper al-Quds al Arabi, saying it had learned that Israeli intelligence agents were inside the synagogues.
The group has been linked in the past to al-Qaeda, although it remains unclear if the group exists. A copy of its statement was obtained by The Associated Press.
The London-based weekly Al-Majalla also received an e-mailed responsibility claim that said al-Qaeda carried out the Istanbul attacks, as well as the November 12 car bomb attack outside the Italian police headquarters in Nasariyah, Iraq that killed 19 Italians and more than a dozen Iraqis.
The explosions, set off two minutes apart, devastated Neve Shalom, Istanbul’s largest synagogue and symbolic center to the city’s 25 000-member Jewish community, and the Beth Israel synagogue about 5km away.
At least six Jews at Beth Israel were among those killed in the blasts, which also wounded 303 people, including Jews and Muslim passers-by.
Some analysts believe Saturday’s attacks were meant as a warning to Turkey’s Islamic-rooted government against continuing close relations with Israel and the West.
”This was a message for the government against pursuing pro-United States policies as well as an attempt to hurt Israel,” said Umit Ozdag, a terrorism expert.
Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation that has long had a secular regime, is an ally of Israel and the US and is Nato’s only Muslim member.
After strong Iraqi opposition, an offer to send Turkish troops into Iraq to relieve US occupation forces there was recently retracted.
The synagogue bombings could hurt tourism, particularly among Israeli tourists, including those who are fans of Turkish resorts on the Mediterranean.
Slackened tourism could hurt Turkey’s International Monetary Fund-backed economic recovery program.
”Turkey is on al-Qaeda’s hit list,” said Sami Kohen, a commentator for the Milliyet newspaper. ”In their eyes, Turkey is a country that has close ties to the West. It also is in close cooperation with Israel.”
Israeli intelligence and explosives experts worked with Turkish teams to investigate the bombings.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom on Sunday laid memorial wreaths in the rubble outside the synagogues and visited some of the hospitalised in solidarity with the small Jewish community in Turkey.
One of the e-mailed statements warned of further attacks and demanded that the US releases Arab prisoners held at Guantanamo in Cuba. It also warned US President George Bush that attacks would be directed at the US itself.
”There is more to come. By God the Jews of the world will regret that their [men] thought of invading the lands of Muslims,” the statement said.
”We tell the criminal Bush and his Arab and non-Arab followers (especially Britain, Italy, Australia and Japan) that cars of death will not stop at Baghdad, Riyadh, Istanbul, Jerba, Nasiriyah or Jakarta,” it said, referring to past attacks in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Indonesia.
Aksu, the Turkish Interior Minister, said he was convinced the explosions of two Isuzu pickup trucks outside the synagogues were suicide strikes.
Hurriyet, a Turkish daily, said the driver of one of the trucks was filmed by the security camera outside the Neve Shalom synagogues. But it quoted police officials as saying the driver’s identity was still unclear.
The newspaper said that the son of that pickup truck’s owner has been missing for two weeks.
According to another daily, Sabah, the other truck was purchased with documentation including a driver’s license of the brother of a man who had purportedly had relations with terrorists and who fought in Bosnia and Chechnya. The license was reportedly stolen from the brother.
Each pickup truck was packed with about 400kg of explosives, Anatolia reported, citing a senior police official.
In 1986, Palestinian gunmen killed 22 worshippers at Neve Shalom.
Al-Qaeda is thought to have carried out the 2002 vehicle bombing at a synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba that killed 21 people, mostly foreign tourists. — Sapa-AP