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Ankara blast echoes past attacks in Turkey

Timeline of terror: Ankara blast echoes past attacks in Turkey
MENA
4 min read
A timeline of waves of attacks carried out by various militant groups in Turkey between mid-2015 and early 2017.
Turkey's interior minister said on Sunday that two terrorists carried out a bomb attack in front of the ministry buildings in Ankara [Getty]

Turkey's interior minister said on Sunday that two terrorists carried out a bomb attack in front of the ministry buildings in Ankara, adding one of them died in the explosion and the other was "neutralised" by authorities there.

The bombing, the first to hit Ankara in a number of years, comes almost a year after six people were killed and 81 wounded in an explosion in a busy pedestrian street in central Istanbul on 13 November 2022.

Turkey blamed Kurdish militants for the Istanbul blast, which reminded Turks of a wave of attacks carried out by various militant groups in Turkish cities between mid-2015 and early 2017.

Here's a timeline are some of those deadly attacks:

5 Jan 2017 - A Turkish police officer and a courthouse employee were killed by a car bomb in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir while at least 10 people were wounded. Authorities said Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants were behind the attack.

31 December 2016 - Islamic State claimed responsibility for a New Year's Day mass shooting in which 39 people were killed after a lone gunman opened fire in a packed Istanbul nightclub.

17 December 2016 - A car bomb killed 13 soldiers and wounded 56 when it tore through a bus carrying off-duty military personnel in the central city of Kayseri. An offshoot of the PKK claimed responsibility for the attack.

10 December 2016 - Twin bombings, one planted in a car and the other strapped to a suicide bomber, killed 44 people, most of them police officers, and wounded more than 150 outside an Istanbul soccer stadium. A PKK offshoot, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), claimed responsibility for the attack.

26 August 2016 - A suicide truck bombing at a police headquarters in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast killed at least 11 and wounded dozens. The PKK claimed responsibility for the attack.

20 August 2016 - A suicide bomber carried out an attack on a wedding party in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep that killed at least 51 people. President Tayyip Erdogan said the attacker had worked with the Islamic State.

28 June 2016 - A triple suicide bombing and a gun attack killed 45 people and wounded more than 160 people at Istanbul's main airport. Turkey handed down life sentences to people linked to the perpetrators of the attack, believed to have been involved with Islamic State.

12 May 2016 - Explosives that detonated in a village in southeastern Turkey killed 16 people, and had been intended for use in a suicide bombing in the nearby province of Diyarbakir. Kurdish militants were believed to have been transporting the explosives, security sources have said.

19 March 2016 - A suicide bomber killed four people in a busy shopping district of Istiklal Street in the heart of Istanbul. Authorities confirmed three Israelis, two of them holding dual U.S. citizenship, and an Iranian citizen died as a result of the blast. Authorities said a Turkish member of the Islamic State militant group was responsible for the bombing.

13 March 2016 - Thirty-seven people were killed when a bomb-laden car exploded at a crowded transport hub in the heart of the Turkish capital Ankara.

17 February 2016 - Twenty-eight people were killed and dozens wounded in Ankara when a car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses near the armed forces headquarters, parliament and other government buildings.

12 January 2016 - A suicide bomber killed at least 10 people, most of them German tourists, in Istanbul's historic heart in an attack that authorities blamed on Islamic State.

10 October 2015 - Twin bombings in Ankara killed more than 100 people outside the city's main train station. Turkish courts jailed perpetrators, who are believed to be linked to the Islamic State, for life.

8 September 2015 - Kurdish militants killed 15 police officers in two bombings in the eastern Turkish provinces of Mardin and Igdir.

20 July 2015 - An Islamic State suicide bomber killed more than 30 people, mostly young students, in an attack on the mainly ethnic Kurdish town of Suruc near the Syrian border.

(Reuters)

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