30 killed, 126 injured in Ankara bomb attacks

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cancelled all scheduled programs in Istanbul on Saturday following two explosions that rocked an area close to the Ankara train station, presidential sources said.

The Interior Ministry said the explosions killed at least 86 people and wounded 186 more, and that authorities were investigating claims a suicide bomber was responsible. The two bomb explosions targeting a peace rally in the capital Ankara has killed dozens of people and injured scores of others. Turkey’s largest trade unions were planning to get together for a demonstration to protest the Turkish government’s renewed military campaign against Kurdish rebels.

The attack comes weeks before Turkey’s November 1 elections.

“Just after the beginning of the march, at about 10:04 a.m., two bomb attacks occurred among the HDP cortege”.

The explosion, which caused chaos and bloodshed, took place during a peace march.

Police later warned people to disperse over concerns of further explosions as rally organizers made pleas over loudhailers for people to give blood, an Anadolu Agency correspondent at the scene said.

Since then, the ruling party has sought to tar the pro-Kurdish group as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a group described by the US and European Union as a terrorist organization that had been in peace talks to end its bloody 30-year fight for autonomy in Turkey’s southeast.

Eyewitnesses told AFP several corpses were seen lying on the ground while NTV television and the Dogan news agency said at least 20 people were killed.

The U.S. Embassy in Ankara condemned the attack.

The violence there, which has killed hundreds, flared after the Turkish military began launching air raids against PKK positions in Turkey and neighboring Iraq in July. “We curse and condemn this atrocious attack taking aim at our democracy and our country’s peace”, the statement said.

HDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş rightfully said immediately after the attack that it reminded him of terror attacks in the cities of Diyarbakir and Suruç earlier this year.