Four dead in army housing blast in SE Turkey

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Dec 11 (Reuters) Four people died and more than a dozen others were injured when a boiler explosion today partly destroyed a five-storey army residential building in the largest city in southeast Turkey, a top general said.

Land forces chief General Ilker Basbug told reporters at the site of the blast in Diyarbakir, in the mainly Kurdish southeast, that four people were still missing.

Rescue workers were combing through the rubble of the heavily guarded building housing military families that had partly collapsed like a house of cards.

The governor's office in Diyarbakir said the central heating boiler exploded at around 1200 hrs IST in the basement of the military compound.

Police today detained a man who carried out repair work on the boiler on Sunday, state-run Anatolian news agency said.

There was no suggestion of foul play in Monday's blast.

Faulty and old gas-powered central heating systems regularly cause deadly blasts in residential buildings across Turkey, although the devastation caused in Diyarbakir was rare.

Southeast Turkey has long been the scene of separatist violence, though this has fallen off sharply since the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) called a unilateral ceasefire in October.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since the group launched its armed struggle for an independent Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.

REUTERS PDM KN2125