Car bomb attack on military in Turkish capital kills 28

Twenty-eight people were killed and dozens wounded in Turkey's capital Ankara on February 17 when a car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses near the armed forces' headquarters, parliament and other government buildings.

The Turkish military condemned what it described as a terrorist attack on the buses as they waited at traffic lights in the administrative heart of the NATO member's capital.

The attack, the latest in a series of bombings in the past year mostly blamed on Islamic State, comes as Turkey gets dragged ever deeper into the war in neighboring Syria and tries to contain some of the fiercest violence in decades in its predominantly Kurdish southeast.

President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey's determination to fight those behind such acts would only get stronger and that it would not hesitate to exercise its right to self defense.

"We will continue our fight against the pawns that carry out such attacks, which know no moral or humanitarian bounds, and the forces behind them with more determination every day," he said in a written statement.


Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus said 28 people including soldiers and civilians were killed and 61 wounded in the blast, which occurred near a busy intersection less than 500 meters from parliament during the evening rush hour.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag described the attack as an act of terrorism and told parliament, which was in session at the time, that the car had exploded on a part of the street lined on both sides by military vehicles.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who had been due to attend meetings in Brussels on the migration crisis on February 18, canceled the trip, an official in his office said. Erdogan postponed a planned visit to Azerbaijan.

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