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| Friday, 21 November 2003 |
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Istanbul blast kills 26, injures 450 ISTANBUL, Thursday (AFP) At least 26 people were killed and more than 450 injured in the two powerful bomb attacks against British interests in Istanbul, Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu told reporters here. At least 15 people were killed in the suicide car bomb on the consulate and British Consul General Roger Short was feared dead, according to Turkish officials. A near simultaneous attack on British-based banking giant HSBC left at least 10 dead, according to Justice Minister Cemil Cicek. Meanwhile speaking just hours after the blasts US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair reaffirmed their unity of purpose in the anti-terror war and said the latest attack would do nothing to shake their resolve. "Once again, we must affirm that in the face of this terrorism there must be no holding back, no compromise, no hesitation in confronting this menace, in attacking it wherever and whenever we can, and in defeating it utterly," a grim but determined Blair told reporters at the Foreign Office. "The terrorists hope to intimidate," added Bush, standing at the side of his closest international ally. "They hope to demoralize. They particularly want to intimidate and demoralize the free nations. They're not going to succeed." "Our mission in Iraq is noble and it is necessary," he added. "No act of thugs or killers will change our resolve or alter their fate. A free Iraq will be free of them. We will finish the job we have begun." Blair echoed the sentiment, declaring: "We stay until the job gets done." "We stand absolutely firm until this job is done; done in Iraq, done elsewhere in the world," he said. A spokeswoman for the British-based global banking group HSBC said there had been "a number of fatalities among HSBC employees" at its offices in Istanbul, but could not give a figure. Thursday's attacks -- which a radical Turkish group claimed was carried out in concert with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network -- came at the halfway point of Bush's state visit to Britain, prompting suggestions that the bombers might have chosen their targets for precisely that reason. But both Blair and Bush noted that whatever their target, the attackers -- like those who detonated suicide car bombs outside two Istanbul synagogues last week -- had succeeded in killing mainly Muslims. "I don't know the nature of the casualties today, but I do know the nature of the casualties in the recent attack in Istanbul: more Muslims died in that attack," Bush said. "These are al-Qaeda killers killing Muslims, and they need to be stopped and we will stop them," he said. |
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