Bomb wounds 20 in Turkish resort

A bomb attack in a popular Turkish resort yesterday wounded 20 people, including two foreign tourists, officials said.

"It's been determined that (the explosion) was a bomb," a police officer in the town of Cesme said.

The blast was caused by either a fragmentation bomb or a pipe bomb and occurred in a waste bin outside of a bank in central Cesme, a major tourist centre on the Aegean Sea.

A British citizen and Russian national were among the victims, a police official said.

She said both men were being treated in hospital for their injuries which were not life-threatening.

One victim was seriously wounded, another official said. No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Kurdish rebels, Islamic militants and far-left radicals have been behind similar bombings in Turkey in the past.

Turkish officials have warned in recent months that the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) could step up attacks in western Turkey, especially in urban centres.

The PKK has limited most of its attacks to the mainly Kurdish southeast, but claimed responsibility in April for a bombing in Kusadasi, another Aegean Sea resort centre. One police officer died in that attack.

The armed separatist group has fought for independence since 1984 and more than 30,000 people have died in the violence.

Bomb experts were still investigating at the scene of the blast and police have sealed off the area.

"It's a relief that no one was killed in the explosion," the provincial governor, Yusuf Ziya Goksu, was quoted as saying by the state-run Anatolian news agency.

"Everything is now under control and the authorities are continuing their investigation."

A witness who was injured told Anatolian he saw two men in their mid-20s deposit a package in the waste bin about half an hour before the explosion.

"I was sitting in front of the rubbish bin that exploded. Two people came and left a black nylon bag," Ramazan Mert said.

Turkey's worst peacetime attack was in November 2003, when a Turkish cell in the al Qaeda network carried out four suicide bombings against Jewish and British targets. More than 60 people were killed and hundreds were wounded in the attacks.