Several dead as explosion rocks square in central Istanbul

[Anthea]

The Guardian

At least 10 people have been killed after a large explosion in a square in Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district.

Turkish police have sealed off the square and ambulances have rushed to the scene, close to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, in a major tourist area of Turkey’s most populous city. The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear.

Istanbul governor’s office said in a statement on its website that 10 people had been killed and 15 wounded.

One woman who works at a nearby antiques store told Reuters: “The explosion was very loud. We shook a lot. We ran out and saw body parts.”

Turkey is on alert after 103 people were killed in October when two suicide bombers attacked a crowd of peace activists in the capital Ankara, the bloodiest strike in the country’s modern history.

That operation was blamed on Islamic State, as were two other bloody assaults in the country’s Kurdish-dominated south-east earlier in the year.

Turkish authorities have in recent weeks detained several suspected Isis members, with officials saying they were planning attacks in Istanbul.

But Turkey is also waging an all-out assault on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has staged dozens of attacks against members of the security forces in the southeast of the country.

A Kurdish splinter group – the the Freedom Falcons of Kurdistan – claimed a mortar attack on Istanbul’s second international airport on 23 December that killed a female cleaner and damaged several planes.

Meanwhile the banned, leftist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front has also staged a string of usually small-scale attacks in Istanbul over the last months.

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[Anthea]

Bolstered by his election victory, Erdogan stepped up his campaign against the Kurdish PKK, considered a terrorist organization by both the European Union and the U.S.

The Turkish president minced no words when he told the PKK: “you will be annihilated in (your) houses, (your) buildings, (your) ditches which you have dug. Our security forces will continue this fight until it has been completely cleansed – no matter the cost in human lives and suffering.”

Between 3000 and 5000 Kurds – most of them PKK members – have lost their lives since the cease-fire collapsed last year. Whole Kurdish cities are placed under curfew while the Turkish army hunts down PKK activists. The Kurdish villages and cities are “under virtual siege – without food, electricity, medical supplies and other essentials,” Global Research reported at the beginning of January.

Kurdish citizens in Turkey report that Erdogan’s army uses tanks and artillery in civilian areas, and that schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure have been destroyed in many Kurdish areas.

The central command of the Turkish army boasts that hundreds of PKK members have been killed since late December 2015. Army snipers kill every Kurd who dares to go outside of his house during the long curfews.

Turkish journalist Asli Aydintasbas wrote that Turkey’s Human Rights Foundation reported that there have been 52 intermittent curfews in seven Kurdish towns where 1.3 million people live, sometimes lasting as long as 14 days. The organization puts the civilian death toll since the summer at 124.

“I feel nervous even admitting this to myself but some of the photographs coming out of the region have an unnerving similarity to early images from Syria in 2011 — with buildings bearing signs of last night’s fighting or smoke rising on the horizon from gray, concrete-colored towns,” Aydintasbas reported.

“All this is happening in a NATO country that just hosted a G20 meeting,” the Turkish journalist added, while criticizing the world for remaining silent about what is happening in Turkish Kurdistan.

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