Turkish Warplanes Strike Kurdish Targets After Attack

Istanbul, Turkey — Turkish warplanes struck Kurdish targets in northern Iraq yesterday in apparent retaliation for a terrorist attack in Istanbul on Sunday that killed 17 people, including a pregnant woman just days away from giving birth.

Istanbul police said they had identified a suspect believed to have planted the bombs and claimed the man had links to the Kurdish Workers Party camps targeted by Turkish warplanes.

Video footage shot on a mobile phone before the Istanbul explosions appeared to show a man wearing a black or green T-shirt running away from the scene before the blast, while the Vatan newspaper reported that police believed the terrorists had been trained in the camps in the Qandil mountains, where the strikes took place.

A statement on the Web site of the Turkish General Staff reported that up to 40 guerrillas were sheltering by a cave hit in the bombing run. "The cave was destroyed totally in the air attacks," it said. "Most of those terrorists outside the cave, along with an unspecified number inside, were killed."

A Kurdish official confirmed a cave had been hit but said there were no casualties.

The airstrike, the latest of scores of attacks Turkey has carried out in northern Iraq this year, failed to dispel doubts over Kurdish involvement in the bombings. The exposure of a shadowy nationalist network of saboteurs earlier this month cast doubt on automatic assumptions of Kurdish separatist involvement in terror attacks.

Yesterday's developments also did little to abate tensions in Turkey which have been raised by a Constitutional Court hearing on a motion to ban leading members of the ruling AK Party, including Prime Minister Erdogan and President Gull.