By Murad Sezer, AP USAToday November 14, 2003

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) — Near-simultaneous car bombs exploded outside two
Istanbul synagogues filled with worshippers Saturday, killing at least 20 people
and wounding more than 300. The government said the attack had international
links, raising suspicions that the al-Qaeda terror network was involved.

One blast tore apart the facade of Neve Shalom — Istanbul’s biggest synagogue
and the symbolic center of the 25,000-member Jewish community in this Muslim
nation — just as hundreds of people inside were celebrating a boy’s bar
mitzvah.

Three miles away in an affluent neighborhood, the other blast hit the Beth
Israel synagogue, where some 300 people were marking the completion of a
remodeled religious school. Six Jews were killed at Beth Israel and many injured,
including Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva and his son. Fourteen Muslims were also killed –
including two security guards at Beth Israel and one at Neve Shalom.

The bombings targeted a secular-minded nation that is the sole Muslim member
of NATO and a close ally of the United States — at one point considering
sending troops to help in the occupation of neighboring Iraq. Turkey also has
strong military and economic ties with Israel.

Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said police were investigating whether the
blasts were set off by suicide bombers, a timer or remote control. Aksu
earlier said the attacks appeared to be suicide bombings, but he said police were
now checking footage from the synagogues’ security cameras.

Security camera footage shows a driver parking a red Fiat in front of Neve
Shalom, then getting out and walking away from the car before it explodes,
police told the semiofficial Anatolia News Agency.

A local Turkish militant group reportedly claimed responsibility for the
blast. But police said the attack was too sophisticated for such a small group and
said they were looking into al-Qaeda links.

“It is obvious that this terrorist attack has some international
connections,” Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said.

Israel sent a police forensics team to help the Turkish investigation. “This
wasn’t just an attack against Jews,” said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon. “This is radical Islamic terrorism against humanity.”
A senior Israeli government source said the attack must have been at least
coordinated with international terror organizations. The operation suggests the
bombs “were the making of al-Qaeda or Hezbollah,” the Lebanese guerrilla
movement backed by Syria and Iran, the source said on condition of anonymity.
Israel Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was headed to Turkey on Sunday to visit
the two synagogues. The two nations have developed warm relations in the past
decade — the Israeli air force regularly trains over Turkish airspace and the
countries’ intelligence services share sensitive information about military
developments in Syria and Iran and Islamic militant groups.

al-Qaeda is suspected in an April 2002 vehicle bombing at a historic
synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba that killed 21 people, mostly
foreign tourists.

President Bush condemned Saturday’s attack in the “strongest terms,” saying
its choice of targets “reminds us that our enemy in the war against terror is
without conscience or faith.”

Turkey has also raised the ire of some in the Arab world by offering to send
troops to Iraq to bolster U.S. troops. On Oct. 14, a suicide car bomber
exploded his vehicle outside the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad, killing the driver and
a bystander and wounding at least 13
Iraqi leaders came out against any Turkish deployment and Ankara this month
retracted its offer.

Police put the casualty toll at 20 dead and 303 wounded. A crater as deep as
a person was punched into the pavement outside Neve Shalom. The streets
outside each synagogue were covered with charred debris and shattered cars, as
medical teams carried and helped away bloodied and burned victims.
Up to 80 of the wounded were Jewish. Most of the victims were passers-by in
residents in the neighborhoods of narrow streets and closely build apartment
buildings where many Christian Greeks and Armenians live alongside Muslims. A
mosque just a few doors down from Neve Shalom — which in Hebrew means “oasis of
peace” — also had its windows blown out.

“Muslim, Christian, Jewish, people are people. Today it’s them, tomorrow it
could be me,” said Ismail Yilmaz, a shopkeeper looking for his missing employee
Rami Kucuk.

The blast went off outside Neve Shalom just as honored guests had finished
reading a traditional prayer during a bar mitzvah — the coming-of-age ceremony
for a boy’s 13th birthday. The boy survived.

Security has been tight at Neve Shalom since a 1986 attack when gunmen killed
22 worshippers and wounded six during a Sabbath service. That attack was
blamed on the radical Palestinian militant Abu Nidal. The Iranian-backed Shiite
Muslim group Hezbollah carried out a bomb attack against the synagogue in 1992,
but no one was injured.

The other blast collapsed Beth Israel’s roof.

“We were in the middle of prayers, suddenly there was a big explosion,” chief
rabbi Isak Haleva said. “All of the windows were shattered. I found myself in
shock, amid a great cloud of smoke.”

“To do something like this when people are praying — this is truly beyond the
pale of human conduct, even animals don’t commit evil like this,” he told
Israel Radio.

A militant Turkish Islamic group, the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front,
claimed responsibility for the attacks in a phone call to the Anatolia News
Agency.

The Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front, also known as IBDA-C, which told
Anatolia attacks would continue “to prevent the opposition against Muslims,” has
been accused in a bombing that injured 10 people in Istanbul on Dec. 31, 2000.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2003 and is filed under hotnews.