Turkey bomb massacre kills 86 and injures over 180 at pro-Kurdish peace rally
Warning: The video in this article shows the moment a bomb explodes at the peace rally killing at least 86 people and injuring over 180. Contains distressing scenes
A bomb attack on a march in the Turkish capital Ankara has killed 86 people and injured at least 186 others, the country's health minister said.
The explosion was captured by a cameraman at the second that the bomb went off. Video posted online showed the blast ripping through a crowd of flag-waving demonstrators calling for peace in the fighting between the government and the Kurdish guerrilla group the PKK.
The demonstrators in the front of the crowd, who had linked hands, flinched and bowed their heads at the force of the blast from the fireball behind them.
There has been no claim of responsibility as yet for Saturday morning's attack, but it may have been the work of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
The health minister, Mehmet Muezzinoglu, said 62 people had died at the scene and 24 people in hospital from their injuries. He added that 28 of the 186 injured were in a serious condition.
The organisers of the demonstration were supporters of the Kurdish political party, the HDP, and left-wing secular sympathisers. Their Kurdish allies in Syria and Iraq have been fighting fierce battles with Isil militants in neighbouring Syria.
Kurdish groups are also likely to point the finger at the Turkey's Islamist government, which is accused of tacit support for Isil and has also fought a long-running war with armed Kurdish separatists.
The PKK had just announced a unilateral ceasefire in the current upsurge of fighting. That seemed in part at least designed to boost support for the HDP in parliamentary elections next month.
Those elections are crucial for the future of the ruling AKP, a moderate Islamist party, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. If the HDP win ten per cent of the vote, it will repeat its feat in June elections which led to a stalemate by winning seats in parliament and most probably preventing the AKP winning a majority.
It will almost certainly stop AKP pushing through constitutional changes that would hand more powers to Mr Erdogan.
Videos from the concourse in central Ankara showed more than a dozen bodies on the bloodied ground, several of them draped in banners the yellow HDP colours demanding an end to the state’s three decade-long battle with Kurdish militants.
"We heard one huge blast and then one smaller explosion and then there was a a great movement and panic. Then we saw corpses around the station," said one witness, Ahmet Onen.
"A demonstration that was to promote peace has turned into a massacre - I don't understand this," he added, in floods of tears.
Political leaders reacted with outrage. "We are faced with a huge massacre. A barbaric attack has been committed," the HDP leader, Selahattin Demirtas, said.
Saturday's bomb was the fourth such attack to rock Kurdish targets inside Turkey in a year, underlining the depth of the challenge facing Mr Erdogan in restoring security to a country destabilised by war in neighbouring Syria.
Ahmet Davutoglu, the prime minister was due to hold an emergency meeting with the heads of the police and intelligence agencies and other senior officials later on Saturday, his office said.
Although the cause of Saturday’s blast was not immediately clear unclear, local media posited the involvement of a suicide bomber. The speculation evoked an earlier attack on a meeting of mostly Kurdish activists in the border town of Suruc in which 33 people were killed.
That attack inflamed tensions between Kurdish citizens and the Turkish government. It also hastened the end of a three-year long ceasefire between the state and the PKK.
Nationalist violence had torn at the nation’s delicate social fabric in recent months, threatening broad civil unrest just before early elections in November.
Many Kurds accused Turkish authorities of collaborating with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant jihadists in Syria, allegations Ankara vehemently denies. Turkey says over 140 members of the security forces have been killed in PKK attacks since and have hit back with a relentless bombing campaign against the group.
Turkish police fired into the air to disperse protesters from the scene, prompting cried of "police murderers" from the crowd.
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