Turkey accuses Kurdish PKK over Istanbul bomb attack
The Hindu
A suspect was arrested by the early hours of Monday
Turkey's Interior Minister accused the Kurdistan's Workers' Party (PKK) of responsibility for a bombing in a busy Istanbul shopping thoroughfare that killed six people and said Monday a suspect has been arrested.
The explosion tore through Istiklal Street, a popular shopping destination for locals and tourists, on Sunday afternoon, wounding dozens.
A suspect was arrested by the early hours of Monday.
"The person who planted the bomb has been arrested," Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in a statement broadcast by the official Anadolu news agency.
"According to our findings, the PKK terrorist organisation is responsible," he said.
The PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara as well as its Western allies, has kept up a deadly insurgency for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey since the 1980s.
Regularly targeted by Turkish military operations, the group is also at the heart of a tussle between Sweden and Turkey, which has been blocking Stockholm's entry into NATO since May, accusing it of leniency towards the PKK.
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