A militant group thought to be linked to the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said today it was behind a weekend bomb attack in southern Turkey that injured 14 people.
The Kurdistan Liberation Hawks (TAK), an unknown group until it claimed responsibility for small bomb attacks in Istanbul last month, made the claim in a statement on the Germany-based Mesopotamian News Agency, which often carries PKK statements.
The bomb exploded under a police car outside a concert venue in the southern port city of Mersin on Sunday night during a performance by well-known Turkish pop singer Candan Ercetin. Bomb disposal experts later destroyed two suspicious packages at the venue.
Turkish media said there had also been explosions at a hotel, a bank and the local offices of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party in Mersin in the last two months.
The bombings in Istanbul hit two small hotels and a gas depot in August. A Turk and an Iranian were killed and several foreign tourists were among the wounded in those blasts.
Authorities at the time blamed the PKK for those attacks, which an earlier TAK statement said were in retaliation for Turkish security operations against Kurdish guerrillas.
TAK has claimed responsibility for several other attacks, including a car bomb targeting the governor of eastern Van province in July in which three people were killed. The claims could not be verified.
More than 30,000 people have been killed in the PKK's 20-year-old conflict with Turkish security forces for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast. Violence has flared again since the PKK ended its unilateral ceasefire on June 1st after a lull of several years following the jailing of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999.