By Enyichukwu Enemanna
At least 22 persons have been arrested in connection with the Sunday bomb explosion at a busy pedestrian avenue in Istanbul, killing many.
Turkey’s interior minister, Suleyman Soylu on Monday said initial findings indicated that Kurdish separatists were responsible for the deadly blast.
Among those arrested include one person who is believed to have planted the bomb. “The person who planted the bomb has been arrested,” Soylu said in an overnight statement carried by the official Anadolu agency and local TV stations.
“According to our findings, the PKK terrorist organisation is responsible,” he stated.
Authorities gave the number of persons that died as six while 81 were wounded at the explosion on Istiklal Avenue, a popular thoroughfare lined with shops and restaurants that leads to the iconic Taksim Square.
The minister also accused Kurdish forces controlling most of northeastern Syria, which Ankara considers terrorists, of being behind the attack.
“We believe that the order for the attack was given from Kobane,” he added.
Kobane, a city that has remained famous for the 2015 battle that enabled Kurdish forces to repel the Islamic State group, is controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), of which the People’s Protection Units (YPG), allied to the PKK, are a major component.
Hours after the explosion on Sunday afternoon, Vice President Fuat Oktay visited the site to give the latest death and injury toll, and promised to resolve the matter “very soon”.
The area, in the Beyoglu district of Turkey’s largest city, had been crowded as usual at the weekend with shoppers, tourists and families.
Hundreds of people fled the historic Istiklal Avenue after the blast, as ambulances and police raced in.
Authorities later said a government ministry worker and his daughter were among the dead. Five people were in intensive care in hospital, two of them in a critical condition.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the blast.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the blast a “treacherous attack” and said its perpetrators would be punished.
“Efforts to defeat Turkey and the Turkish people through terrorism will fail today just as they did yesterday and as they will tomorrow,” the president told a news conference before flying to Indonesia for a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies.
“Our people can rest assured that the culprits… will be punished as they deserve,” he said, adding that initial information suggested “a woman played a part” in it.
“It would be wrong to say this is undoubtedly a terrorist attack but the initial developments and initial intelligence from my governor is that it smells like terrorism,” he added.
