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Blast Kills Two at Governor’s Office in Turkey’s Adana | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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A Turkish F-16 fighter jet approaches the tarmac of Incirlik airbase in the southern Turkish city of Adana July 4, 2012. REUTERS/Umit Bektas


An explosion killed two people and wounded more than a dozen outside a local government building in the southern Turkish city of Adana on Thursday, weeks after the United States warned extremist groups were planning attacks.

Video footage showed a vehicle ablaze in the car park outside the governor’s office and thick black smoke rising into the sky in the city, 40 km from Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.

Windows were blown out and parts of the facade of the building, roughly six floors high, were torn off.

As has been the case with previous attacks, the Turkish authorities immediately slapped a broadcast ban on footage of the blast.

Adana is about 16 km from Incirlik Air Base, which the U.S. military uses to launch attacks against ISIS militants in Syria. Families of U.S. military personnel were ordered to leave Adana and some other parts of Turkey in March over security concerns.

“Damned terror continues to target our people. We will fight with this terror to the end in the name of humanity,” Turkish EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik wrote on Twitter, saying he had spoken to the Adana governor.

The state-run Anadolu agency quoted provincial governor Mahmut Demirtas as saying two people were killed and 16 wounded. Anadolu said the blast, which occurred shortly after 8 a.m., came from a vehicle in front of the building.

The attack is believed to have been carried out by a woman, the governor said, without providing further details of the nature of the blast.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But Labor Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu said Kurdish PKK militants may have been responsible and that 21 people were wounded, five of them seriously.

“It looks like they (the PKK) were probably behind it this morning yet again, as this looks like their one of their actions,” he told broadcaster CNN Turk.

PKK, ISIS and leftist militants have all carried out bomb attacks in Turkey in recent years.

The U.S. Consulate General in Adana warned three weeks ago that extremist groups “continue aggressive efforts to attack U.S. citizens and other foreigners in Adana”.

The State Department has warned U.S. citizens to avoid travel to southeastern Turkey.