Bomb blast in Turkish city hurts man, causes damage

ANKARA (Reuters) – A small bomb wounded one man and damaged
dozens of buildings in western Turkey on Saturday, the
state-run Anatolian news agency said.

The makeshift bomb exploded in a wheelbarrow near a police
station in a mainly Kurdish district of Izmir, Turkey’s third
biggest city, located on the Aegean coast.

The wounded man, aged 54, had been crossing the street at
the time of the blast, which shattered glass and caused other
damage to more than 40 buildings in the vicinity.

Police suspected the hand of the rebel Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK), which is fighting for an ethnic homeland in
southeast Turkey, Anatolian said

A wide variety of militant groups ranging from Kurdish
rebels to ultra-left radicals and Islamists operate in Turkey
and small-scale bomb blasts are not uncommon.

Last month, a group called the Kurdistan Liberation Hawks,
a hard-line PKK-splinter group, carried out two separate bomb
attacks in Istanbul.

One man died in the first blast, which hit an Internet cafe
near a police station. At least six people were hurt in the
second blast targeting a supermarket a few days later.