Turkish Terrorism

[gamavor]

Grenade Attack Rattles U.S. Consulate in Turkey

Wed June 11, 2003 12:56 PM ET

 

 

 

 

By Mark Bentley

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A Turkish man threw two grenades at a U.S. consulate in Turkey Wednesday, shattering windows but causing no injuries, officials said.

 

They declined comment on a report that he was seeking to avenge Israel's attempt to kill a senior Palestinian militant a day earlier and suggested he might be mentally unstable.

 

Police in the southern city of Adana arrested the man, who was in his 30s, after he entered the garden of the consulate there just after 2:30 p.m. (1135 GMT) and threw the hand grenades toward the main building, shattering windows.

 

"One exploded. There was minimal damage, no injuries and the suspect was captured," a U.S. consulate official told Reuters.

 

Turkey's NTV television named the man as Cumali Kizilkoca and quoted security sources as saying he confessed to acting in revenge for Tuesday's helicopter strike on Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, a leader of the Hamas movement in Gaza.

 

A Foreign Ministry official, however, said: "We don't know why he did it, but maybe he was mentally unbalanced."

 

Police were also checking whether he had links to outlawed Turkish groups, including Kurdish and Islamist militants.

 

The United States has warned its citizens against possible attacks from Turkish guerrilla groups, particularly the far-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), whose roots go back to the Dev Sol movement of the 1980s.

 

DHKP-C has claimed responsibility for several attacks on government and other targets in recent years, including against the U.S. consulate in Istanbul. The United States is relocating that consulate to heavily fortified buildings outside the city center, partly due to concerns over security.

 

 

 

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?t...storyID=2913697