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TURKEY – PEACE RALLY TURNS DEADLY WITH POLICE TEAR GAS
& 2 EXPLOSIONS – DEATHS, INJURIES - WOMEN MOURN BUT DEFIANT AGAINST TERROR
By Tom Wyke and Imogen Calderwood For Mailonline – 10 October 2015
Turkish police fired tear gas at mourners who were laying flowers at the site of Turkey's deadliest ever terror attack this morning. At least 97 died and 247 were wounded when two suspected suicide bombers set off two explosions during a peace rally of pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara yesterday.Protesters clashed with riot police in Istanbul last night as they took to the streets to denounce the attacks. And this morning, police fired tear gas to disperse more demonstrators and pro-Kurdish officials at the scene of the disaster in Ankara. They held back the mourners, including the pro-Kurdish party's leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag and insisted investigators were still working at the site.
Distraught: A
woman mourns for victims as her friends comfort her during a demonstration one
day after the double explosion in Ankara
Around 70 mourners were eventually allowed to enter the cordoned
off area outside Ankara's main train station - where the explosions occurred -
to briefly pay their respects for the victims today.
The group of mourners then began to march toward a central square
in Ankara, chanting slogans against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who many
hold responsible for the spiraling violence that has plagued Turkey since the
summer.
Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said ISIS terrorists or
far-left Kurdish extremists could have carried out the attack but no group has
yet claimed responsibility for it.
He declared three days of mourning yesterday and said there were
'strong signs' the attack was carried out by two suicide bombers.
Investigators have determined that one of the bombers was a
male aged about 25 or 30, according to the Yeni Safak newspaper
which is said to be close to the government.
Harrowing footage from yesterday morning showed their relatives
holding hands and dancing down the streets of Ankara, but joy turned to terror
when the first the blast erupted just metres behind them.
The explosion tore through the crowd of people, maiming dozens of
innocent bystanders and leaving body parts and debris littering the road.
Pictures which emerged shortly afterwards showed torn fragments of
flags and banners people had been waving just moments before littering the
ground.
Witnesses described how the blasts, which are believed to have
been a terror attack, shook the ground around the city's main train station.
Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu initially confirmed that 62
people had been killed outright in the blast and a further 24 people had died
in
hospital.
The current death toll, which is expected to increase, makes it
the third deadliest attack on Europe after the Lockerbie bombings in 1988 and
the Madrid train bombs of 2004.
The victims' families faced an agonising wait to identify their
bodies at a forensic facility where autopsies were being carried out
overnight.
More than 10,000 people marched down the main central avenue in
Istanbul to denounce the attacks last night
In an act of solidarity, thousands also took to the streets of Paris, Strasbourg and Marseille in France, as well as in Zurich in Switzerland…...