Turkish official: Was attack international terror act?
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Turkish Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu
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ISTANBUL, Turkey -- At least 20 people were killed and 257 injured when two cars laden with explosives simultaneously detonated near two synagogues in Istanbul early Saturday, according to the Turkish Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu.
AKSU: As you can see our colleagues are continuing the investigation. The scene is being investigated by our teams -- the explosives specialist team and fire brigades are still investigating.
A police officer died and a security officer died and another police officer is seriously injured. I am going to go to the scene to investigate there. Following that I will assess the situation with my colleagues.
Are there signs of this incident being an international terrorist act? Obviously an act on this scale was probably not done by one organization in Turkey. We are considering every organization, internal or international. It is possible but we cannot be sure whether they parked the car here and it exploded later or they parked and arranged a time bomb, or there was someone in the vehicle when it exploded.
It is very important that we must make proper investigations before making statements or accusations. When I was asked at the airport, I said possibly the vehicle was parked and then exploded. But I came here, examined the site, and understand that no car was allowed to approach the site, so we are going to investigate further.
