At least 95 people have been killed and around 250 wounded in the deadliest terror attack in Turkey’s history after two explosions targeted a peace rally in the centre of the capital.



Twin explosions outside Ankara’s main train station on Saturday morning targeted hundreds of people who had gathered to protest against violence between authorities and the Kurdish militant group, the PKK.

Ankara attacks: innocent hearts beating for peace are brutally stopped Read more

Turkish government officials said the explosions were a terrorist attack carried out by suicide bombers but no group immediately claimed responsibility. Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, called emergency meetings with government officials and security chiefs.

Early statements put the death toll at 86, but on Saturday evening both the pro-Kurdish HDP party and the Turkish Medical Association revised the estimate to at least 97, while the wounded numbered 245 or more.

Immediately after the attack at least 20 bodies could be seen covered by bloodstained flags on the road. Witnesses said the blasts were seconds apart shortly after 10am and were so powerful they rocked nearby high-rise buildings.

Turkey awoke in grief on Sunday. “We are in mourning for peace,” said the front-page headline in the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper as three days of national mourning declared by the prime minister got under way.

Other papers voiced public anger over the attack. “Scum attacked in Ankara,” said the Haberturk newspaper, while the pro-government Star declared: “The goal is to divide the nation.”

One of the bombers was identified as a male aged between 25-30 after analysing bodies at the scene and taking fingerprints, the pro-government Yeni Safak said.

Davutoglu, exposing a mosaic of domestic political perils, said Islamic State, Kurdish or far-leftist militants could have carried out the bombing.

His office named 52 of the victims overnight and said autopsies were continuing. It said 246 wounded people were still being treated, 48 of them in intensive care.



The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, condemned the double bombing, saying the attack targeted the country’s unity and peace. Erdoğan said: “I strongly condemn this heinous attack on our unity and our country’s peace. No matter what its origin, aim or name, we are against any form of terrorist act or terrorist organisation. We are obliged to be against it together.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Victims lie on the street in Ankara as the scene of the explosion is cordoned off . Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The president said there was no distinction between the terrorist attack in Ankara, which came just three weeks ahead of parliamentary elections, and the ones targeting Turkish soldiers and police.

“Like other acts of terror, the attack at the Ankara train station is taking aim at our unity, brotherhood and future,” he added. “The solidarity and determination we are going to display in the face of this attack will be the biggest and the most meaningful response to the terror.”

Erdoğan urged people to be “against, not on the side of terror” and said the perpetrators of Saturday’s attack would be found in the shortest time and delivered to justice.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An injured man hugs an injured woman after the explosion Photograph: Tumay Berkin/Reuters

Some witnesses said ambulances could not immediately reach the scene of the attack, and that police obstructed the quick evacuation of the wounded from the square. Turkish MP Sirri Süreyya Önder also claimed a suspicious vehicle and another suspicious package had been found and that bomb-disposal experts had been called to the scene.

In the aftermath of the attack those involved in the peace march tended to the wounded, as hundreds of stunned people wandered around the streets. Bodies lay in two circles around 20m apart where the explosions had taken place.

The prime minister’s office banned media coverage of the attack, citing “security reasons”, though several local media groups said they would ignore the ministry’s orders. Access to social media services, such as Twitter, was temporarily only possible through VPN in Turkey.

Veysel Eroglu, minister for forestry and water, attempted to put the blame on the organisers of the peace rally. “Our people need to be careful of such provocateurs that organise terrorist demonstrations in order to incite discord in social harmony,” he said.

The HDP, one of the groups organising the peace rally, said in a statement that it had specifically been targeted. Several HDP members and parliamentary candidates are among the victims of the attack.

Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chair of the HDP party, said: “This attack is not targeting our state and national unity, it is perpetrated by the state against the people. We are witnessing a massacre here. A cruel and barbarian attack was carried out. The death toll is high.” Demirtas added that he did not expect that those responsible for the bombings would be brought to justice.

Asked at a press conference if he had considered resigning over the Ankara attack, interior minister Selami Altinok denied that there had been failures in security preparations for the planned peace rally. Only hours after the Ankara bomb attacks, the PKK declared a unilateral ceasefire and called on its fighters to halt all guerrilla attacks in Turkey, according to the Firat news agency.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Turkish government ministers condemn two bomb explosions that targeted a peace rally in Ankara.

The US state department strongly condemned what it called a heinous attack, while the US embassy in Ankara said on Twitter: “All of us must stand united against terror.” President Barack Obama later offered his condolences to the Turkish president in a phone call. He reportedly affirmed that the US would “stand with Turkey and its people in the fight against terrorism and other security challenges in the region”.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, expressed “sadness and dismay” over the attacks, while Russia’s Vladimir Putin offered condolences to Erdogan.

In Istanbul an estimated 10,000 people marched down the main central avenue to denounce the attacks. Thousands also took to the streets in solidarity in Paris, Strasbourg and Marseille in France, as well as in Zurich in Switzerland.

The explosion will spark significant security concerns ahead of the parliamentary elections and fuel fear over violent outbreaks in the region. A rally for the pro-Kurdish HDP party was bombed in June, ahead of last year’s general election, but this is the deadliest single attack on the country’s soil.

Turkey has been in a heightened state of alert since starting a “synchronised war on terror” in July, including airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and PKK bases in northern Iraq. It has also rounded up hundreds of suspected militants at home.

Designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the US and the European Union, the PKK launched a separatist insurgency in 1984 in which more than 40,000 people have been killed.

The state launched peace talks with the PKK’s jailed leader in 2012 and the latest in a series of ceasefires had been holding until the violence flared again in July.

With Reuters and the Associated Press