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Kurdish Rebels Derail 2 Trains in Turkey

Posted on: Saturday, 2 July 2005, 12:00 CDT

ANKARA, Turkey - Kurdish guerrillas set off bombs Saturday in eastern Turkey, derailing two trains and killing six soldiers, officials said. The second train was bombed as it rushed to help the first.

The attacks came a day after a suicide bomber was shot to death near the Justice Ministry in Ankara. The bomber, a member of a Marxist group, fled the building when metal detectors went off and police shot him.

Six railway guards were killed in the first attack when the bomb exploded under their car, railway officials said.

The blast sent seven cars flying off the rails in the province of Bingol, 600 miles southeast of the Turkish capital, Ankara, injuring 12 passengers and crew members, some of whom were trapped under the train cars.

The militants derailed the second train by detonating a similar remote-controlled bomb. Authorities provided no information about how many people were on the second train or if there were any casualties.

A third bomb, not far from the site of first attack, was found and detonated by Turkish troops who launched an operation to hunt down the rebels in the rugged area.

Military helicopters ferried the injured to local hospitals, the Anatolia news agency said. All 45 passengers and 11 crew members were evacuated by Turkish troops.

In another bombing, suspected rebels injured three Turkish police officers in the southeastern town of Kulp, police said. The bomb went off as the police approached to check out a suspicious package left in the street.

Military helicopters ferried the injured from the first train bombing to local hospitals, the Anatolia news agency said. All 45 passengers and 11 crew members were evacuated by the army.

Kurdish insurgents have increasingly used remote-controlled bombs in stepped-up attacks since the start of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Turkish officials have said.

Autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels ended a five-year unilateral cease-fire last summer in the overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast, saying Turkey had not responded in kind. The clashes have left 37,000 people dead since 1984.

Syria, long accused by Turkey for harboring Turkish Kurdish rebels, denounced the train bombings as "terrorist actions," saying they "pose a threat to the security and stability of Turkey and the region."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country was getting help from Syria, which is sharing intelligence and handing over rebels.

The United States has been at odds with Syria, accusing Damascus of failing to prevent fighters from crossing its border to join the insurgency in Iraq and suppressing democracy in Lebanon.

Syria and Turkey have sizable Kurdish populations and fear that Kurdish independence could incite their own Kurds to push for autonomy.

Police identified the suicide bomber killed Friday as Eyup Beyaz and said he was a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, an outlawed group that aims to topple the government and replace it with a Marxist one. The group has been responsible for several bombings.

CNN-Turk television said Beyaz was wanted by police for planning two attacks: on the wedding of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's son in August 2003, and during a NATO summit meeting in Istanbul last year.

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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