Blast kills 5 in Turkey’s Kurdish region

ISTANBUL, TURKEY — A remote-controlled car bomb blasted a passing bus transporting soldiers in southern Turkey on Thursday, killing five people and wounding scores more, authorities said.

The attack in the city of Diyarbakir, in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, appeared to be the latest in a raging border battle between Turkish forces and Kurdish separatist rebels, most of whom are based in northern Iraq.

Huseyin Avni Mutlu, governor of Diyarbakir, said four civilians on the bus were killed and that nearly half of the 68 people injured were soldiers traveling in the civilian vehicle. The bomb, concealed in a parked car near a four-star hotel, exploded as the bus passed.

Reports from Diyarbakir indicated that students leaving a nearby private school were also among the blast victims. The Anatolian News Agency reported a student as the fifth fatality, though it was not clear where she was killed.

The explosion burned cars and sent orange flames leaping into the sky as firefighters struggled past sundown to extinguish the blazes and ambulances rushed to and from the scene. Television footage showed onlookers staggering and screaming, some covered in blood.

“It was a very big explosion . . . impossible to describe,” Seyhmus Dogan, a witness whose car was damaged, told Kanal D television.

Diyarbakir is a principal base for tens of thousands of troops battling rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Although the conflict has simmered for decades, fighting surged in recent months after a spate of attacks on soldiers by the rebels and a renewed offensive by Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to launch a major cross-border operation to wipe out PKK positions in northern Iraq. Washington, fearing an escalation of violence in a relatively peaceful area of Iraq, has discouraged an all-out Turkish assault.

Turkey has held off on a full invasion but is maintaining a steady pace of cross-border commando raids and fierce airstrikes.

The PKK did not immediately claim responsibility for Thursday’s assault, but the attack may have come in retaliation for the recent Turkish airstrikes. PKK leaders in Iraq declared Turkish cities to be targets for rebel attack, according to the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency.

Two explosions in the last two weeks here in Istanbul, Turkey’s commercial and financial center, killed one woman and injured nine people. Authorities blamed the Kurdish movement.

Turkey repeatedly bombed purported rebel positions in northern Iraq over 10 days last month and claimed to have killed up to 200 fighters, a figure denied by the PKK.

Erdogan blamed Thursday’s bomb on the PKK, and it appeared likely that his forces would retaliate quickly. Turkish television reported the scrambling of jets later in the day, possibly for new bombing runs.

“Unfortunately, terrorism showed its bloody face once more in Diyarbakir,” Erdogan said. “Such events will not disrupt our determination against terrorism. Our struggle both on international and national levels will continue with the same determination.”

Turkey has long pressed fellow members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.S. to do more to eradicate the PKK, and the conflict is expected to top the agenda when Turkish President Abdullah Gul meets with President Bush at the White House on Tuesday.

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Rome contributed to this report.