Bus Explodes on Turkey's Aegean Coast | Voice of America - English
An injured foreign tourist is carried to ambulance after an explosion in Kusadasi, SaturdayAn explosion on a minibus in a Turkish resort town on the Aegean coast has killed four people and wounded 14 others.  Several of them are believed to be foreigners. Authorities are investigating reports the attack may have been carried out by a female suicide bomber.
The governor of the Aegean resort town of Kusadasi, Ali Baris, says the blast occurred as the minibus was traveling through the town square. Turkish television showed the injured lying on the ground close to the charred remains of the vehicle, before they were taken to hospitals. Rescue workers covered body parts strewn around the wreckage with newspapers. Speaking shortly after the explosion, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was taking anti-terror measures. But he said that "it is not possible to stop it 100 percent, no matter how strict security measures you take." There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Turkish officials say the attack bears the hallmarks of separatist Kurdish rebels linked to the rebel group, known as the PKK. On Sunday, a group affiliated with the PKK, called the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in the tourist resort of Cesme, in Izmir province. No one was killed in that attack. The rebels issued a statement earlier this month warning foreign tourists against traveling to Turkey. The PKK waged a 15-year-long armed campaign to establish an independent Kurdish state. About 40,000 people, most of them Kurds, died in the conflict. The PKK called a unilateral truce in 1999, following the capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The group called off the cease-fire in June last year, saying the Turkish state had repeatedly rebuffed its demands for a lasting peace.