Turkish paper says bomb caused resort blast

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

ISTANBUL, June 27 (Reuters) A blast which tore through a picnic area in a Turkish resort, killing four people and injuring 25 others, was caused by a bomb, Vatan newspaper said today, contradicting official comments on the explosion.

A senior town official had said a gas canister appeared to be the cause of Sunday's blast in comments widely reported in Turkish media.

Police in Ankara and Antalya, the major touristic province in southern Turkey where the incident occurred, as well as local paramilitary police, declined to comment today.

The blast happened in a park near the Manavgat waterfall about 100 km to the east of the city of Antalya, which is popular with tourists from western Europe and Russia.

The four dead included a Hungarian, a Norwegian, a Russian and a Turk.

Vatan said security cameras in the picnic area had shown a man placing a package in a rubbish bin which exploded 20 minutes later.

Another man and a woman who were with him kept watch. It did not specify a source for the report.

Scattered parts from the explosive device have been sent to a forensic laboratory for tests and images of the three people were being compared with archive photographs, the paper said.

There was no claim of responsibility for the blast. Kurdish, leftist and Islamist militants have all carried out bomb attacks in Turkey on military and civilians targets.

The explosion came amid a slowdown in Turkey's key tourism sector, a vital source of foreign currency.

In May the number of foreign tourists visiting Turkey fell some 17 percent from a year earlier, raising concerns about its prospects of reaching a target of 20 billion dollar tourism revenues this year -- vital to reining in the current account deficit.

Tourists were scared off by an outbreak of bird flu at the start of 2006. A spate of bomb attacks, especially by Kurdish separatists, and worldwide Muslim protests against cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad have also discouraged visitors.

REUTERS SHB RN1749

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