Fresh blast in Turkey kills three

MARMARIS, Turkey - A bomb blast has killed three people and wounded dozens in the coastal city Antalya in a second day of attacks on Turkish tourist resorts apparently designed to scare off foreigners and hit the economy.

Blasts yesterday in Turkey's largest city Istanbul and the coastal resort of Marmaris injured 27 people and a Kurdish rebel group believed linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said it carried out those attacks.

"Nothing in Turkey will be as it was before," the shadowy Kurdistan Liberation Hawks (TAK) said on its website, claiming responsibility for Sunday's blasts.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for today's explosion in Antalya, the Mediterranean tourist hub, which killed three Turks.

Locals and witnesses said they heard a loud bang which broke windows, shattered glass, sent shrapnel flying into human flesh and sparked a fire at a shopping area in the heart of the city, one of Turkey's most popular destinations.

"I saw two wounded tourists and the burnt body of a dead man, a pastry vendor," said holidaying journalist Riza Ozel.

Officials at three hospitals contacted by Reuters said they had received in total 38 wounded people. Russia's Vice Consul in Antalya, Sergey Koritsky, told Reuters the injured included a German, a Jordanian, two Iranians, four Israelis and a Russian.

"There was a fire and a lot of cars were damaged, a lot of motorbikes were damaged," he said, adding that the street was packed with restaurants and shops.

The Antalya blast came less than 24 hours after three bombs in Marmaris injured 21 people within 15 minutes and a device in Istanbul wounded six people.

Television images from Antalya showed shattered shop windows with goods scattered, bicycles torn apart on the street, crowds gathering and men carrying wounded and bloodied people, many in a state of shock.

In Marmaris, 10 Britons and six Turks were wounded when a bomb placed under a seat in a minibus exploded on a street crowded with bars and restaurants around midnight.

"Who did this? What do they want from these people?" Suzanne Bedford, whose two grandchildren were being treated at the Ahu Hetman hospital in Marmaris, asked an official.

Local authorities pledged to find the culprits, suspected of belonging to the PKK, which has waged a more than 20-year campaign to carve a homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeast.

General Yasar Buyukanit, who took over as chief of general staff at a ceremony on Monday, said separatist terrorism would be defeated. The army is stepping up attacks on the PKK and the rebel group has offered a conditional ceasefire.

Hotel cancellations

There was little impact on Turkish financial markets, but one hotel owner in Marmaris said cancellations had already started to flow in.

Antalya photographic shop owner Mesut Isik was pessimistic. "The tourists have already been few this season and from now on none will come. Shops have no option but to close," he said.

German tourism firm Thomas Cook said clients who had booked a trip to Turkey could change their reservations free of charge.

Antalya and Marmaris are resorts popular with European and Russian tourists as well as Turks. Millions of foreigners flock to the long Turkish coastline each summer.

"I condemn this wave of barbaric and cowardly attacks which occurred in the past 24 hours in Turkey," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement.

Locals are concerned the $18 billion tourist industry, a powerful motor of the economy, may be further damaged by the attacks, the latest in a string of bombings in the past year.

Security was stepped up along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, still packed with tourists.

Kurdish separatists, leftists and Islamic militants have carried out bomb attacks in Turkey in the past.

The PKK launched a separatist campaign in 1984 and Ankara blames the group for the death of more than 30,000 people since then. The United States, the European Union and Turkey consider it a terrorist organisation.

The TAK said it carried out the bombings in response to the jail conditions of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.

- REUTERS