Istanbul blast believed to be work of locals
Turkish authorities sought to ease fears of a fresh wave of terrorist violence on Wednesday after a bomb attack on a Masonic lodge in Istanbul that revived the spectre of Islamist-related suicide bombings. Muammer Guler, governor of Turkey’s largest and most ethnically diverse city, said there was no evidence to link Tuesday’s attack to the wave of bombings that killed 61 people and injured more than 600 in the city in November last year. Security forces blamed those atrocities on terrorist cells linked to al-Qaeda. “The style of the attack, the weapons and bomb that were used [in Tuesday’s attack], were very different” to the November bombings, Mr Guler said, according to the Anatolian news agency. Nevertheless, he said investigators would consider “all sorts of possibilities”. Full Story