- ISTANBUL (Reuters) - At least
20 people were killed and more than 250 wounded on Saturday when car bombers
shattered two Istanbul synagogues as worshippers celebrated the Sabbath.
-
- Turkish officials said al Qaeda might have had a hand
in it.
-
- "It is clear that this is a terrorist event with
international links," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said as emergency
services struggled to treat those caught up in the blasts, which wrecked
cars and buildings over wide areas.
-
- Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said he could not rule
out a role by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, blamed for attacks on other Jewish
targets around the world in the past 18 months.
-
- "It was like a battlefield," said Yavuz Guler,
who dashed to one of the synagogues from the nearby restaurant where he
works.
-
- "The injured were in an awful state, moaning, but
unable to speak. Some were screaming, there was a lot of blood and body
parts on the street," the 24-year-old said.
-
- The attackers could have been suicide bombers or may
have detonated devices in the vehicles by remote control, Aksu said.
-
- "In both cases, vans were driven by the attackers
toward their targets. We believe they contained the same kind of explosives,
they are the same kind of terror attacks," he said.
-
- Istanbul health authorities said 20 people had been killed
and 257 wounded in the two attacks, which hit the central Neve Shalom synagogue
and another, Beit Israel, in the Sisli district around 9:30 a.m. (0730
GMT). The Neve Shalom -- "Oasis of Peace" -- was especially busy
for a bar-mitzvah coming of age ceremony.
-
- But many of the casualties were not Jews but people passing
by on the busy streets outside the heavily protected synagogues.
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- Police officers earlier said as many as 24 had died.
The Anatolian news agency said one policeman was among the dead.
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