al Qaeda strikes Istanbul, again..

[He219]

http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/ap/20031120/capt.lon80711201001.turkey_explosion_lon807.jpg

The damaged HSBC bank in Istanbul, Turkey, is seen in this image made from television, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2003, following an explosion. (AP Photo/NTV via APTN)

Three Blasts Hit Istanbul, Three Killed (http://news.lycos.com/news/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=800511)


ISTANBUL (*******) - At least three people were killed when three explosions rocked the Turkish commercial capital Istanbul on Thursday, one destroying part of the HSBC Bank headquarters and a second hitting the British consulate.

Men and women wept on the street, nursing their wounds, and bodies lay amid wreckage outside the HSBC building. CNN-Turk television said many were badly wounded in the blast at the British consulate.

A security guard said at least three people were killed at the HSBC building. The third explosion was in a residential area.

On Saturday, two trucks packed with homemade explosives detonated outside the Beit Israel and Neve Shalom synagogues in Istanbul, killing 25 people and wounding hundreds more.

Ambulances could be seen taking injured away on Thursday. The front to the HSBC building, a towering white block in the commercial district, appeared to be shattered.

"It sounds like it is pretty bad," said a British embassy spokesman. One of the explosions caused serious damage at the British consulate in Istanbul, the spokesman said.

Chris Kitrinos, an English teacher, told CNN television on Thursday: "The damage is very extensive. I've been told that there are people lying around and I am looking at people lying on the ground lying.

"Civilians are carrying people away from the scene...There is debris and bodies around."

The Istanbul stock exchange was closed after the explosions.

A unit of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network claimed responsibility for the attacks at the weekend and warned that the Islamist network was planning more attacks against the United States and its allies.

On Wednesday, Istanbul's governor identified two Turkish men he said were the synagogue suicide bombers and said their attacks resembled those of al Qaeda.

Eight people, already in custody for questioning in connection with Saturday's bombings, were sent to a state security court on Wednesday, the state-run Anatolian news agency said. They include the owners of the vehicles used in the attacks.

[ßå$tĮТHÏ¿ð]

This goes to show how weakened the Terrorist network is. Now I am under the assumption that many people in Turkey are Muslim? Am I correct? So this goes to show that Al-Qaeda is pretty much willing to attack anyone at this point to get there point across, and has been severly weakend since they now choose to target "soft targets".

[jdbjdb]

Most are muslim, but the only muslim country(not arab) friendly to Israel is Turkey, so they are a target for that reason. This being a British target, is it possible now that Britons have a change of heart and support President Bush's war on terrorism?

[ßå$tĮТHÏ¿ð]

Well CNN said "5 bombs" have went off in different areas of Istanbul, mostly attacking British targets and a mall....definately these people are sick. It takes a big ass bomb to blow up the side of a building like that (i.e. fertilizer bomb).

[Mr Gently Benevolent]

Talk some sense jdbjdb we in the UK are well and truly behind the war on terrorism, you are not going to point out a few demonstrators and say that we are not. The countries active in operations against Al Q are many in fact every European state is totally committed, we are however not all big fans of Bush, a dislike of Bush is not a sign of lack of commitment. :|

[ßå$tĮТHÏ¿ð]

You know what I'm interested in? How Al Jezera spins this bombing and twists it around. 25 dead...RIP

[Uncle Chô]

Deaths toll is rising...


ISTANBUL (*******) - Two blasts rocked Istanbul on Thursday, killing at least 25 people and devastating both the HSBC Bank headquarters and British consulate in an apparent suicide attack Turkey called a strike against British interests.

Turkish television, quoting city health officials, said that besides the -at least- 26 killed (including the British Consul-General Roger Short), 390 people were injured. A caller to Turkey's semi-official Anatolian news agency claimed responsibility in the name of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group, which Washington blames for September 11 U.S. attacks.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, whose country is the United States's chief backer in the Iraqi occupation, said the strikes bore "all the hallmarks of the international terrorism operations practiced by al Qaeda and associated organizations."

The blasts, coinciding with a British visit by President Bush, were the second such strike in Muslim Turkey in five days. Turkey's interior minister said he saw a connection with weekend attacks on two Istanbul synagogues that killed 25.

Men and women wept on the streets, their clothes blood-stained, nursing their wounds.

Bodies lay amid a chaos of wreckage outside the towering Istanbul headquarters of London-based HSBC, the world's second largest bank by market value. Witness accounts suggested the blasts were suicide bombings.

"There is one dead on the lower floor and two dead on the upper floors," an emergency worker who was inside the HSBC building said. "But there were many more who died on the street and in cars. I believe as many as 10 people died outside."

Firefighters were working to put out a fire inside the 12-storey building, charred and black from the explosion. Twisted pieces of cars and broken glass lay across the street outside the building.

"The windows just exploded, everything exploded," said one banker who worked in the HSBC building.

Turkey is one of Washington's closest political and military allies in the Muslim world -- a relationship that singles it out as a possible target for Islamist militants.

Its government has Islamist roots but its policies are strongly pro-Western. Washington has long promoted Turkey as a model Islamic democracy that could be emulated by other Muslim countries.

There was no explicit link between Bush's visit to Britain and the blasts on Thursday and Saturday. But intelligence officials have long feared militants could launch attacks on "soft targets" in countries such as Turkey.

The attacks could deal a tremendous blow to a Turkish economy only now struggling from recession and facing still huge debt repayments over the next year. A tenuous return of foreign investment could be put at risk by any continued atmosphere of danger.



http://wwwi.*******.com/images/mdf411268.jpg

:(

[wulfstan]

Just imagine, you get up in the morning, go to work, doing your normal stuff and then you're dead because someone you never met decided to blow up the building you work in and all because they believe their god gave them the devine right to do it.

[Seoulstriker]

http://wwwi.*******.com/images/mdf411268.jpg

:( :( :(

TOURNIQUET?

[martinexsquaddie]

anybody got a clue what al qaeda want?
Apart from americans out of Saudi
seems to me to be death to everybody who isn't al qaeda
Personally I think Bush's war on terror is a vauge project with no clear aims or objectives. already seen hippys and earth first types labelled,"Terroists" Lets keep it simple.
question DO YOU BELIVE YOUR GOD WANTS YOU TO KILL ALL UNBELIVERS
If the answer yes
prepare to go to paradise aided by the free world using smart bombs bulllets or sharpened sticks.
Its not about israel or hippys. Its ****ed up fundamentalists who want to kill everybody

[Uncle Chô]

:( :( :(

TOURNIQUET?

It looks like. She might be using a tie (?) to stop bleeding from her deep wrist cut. Not the best way to stop hemorrhage if you have an emergency service nearby. This method should be used if alone, lost in a remote area and with several life threatening wounds. Controlling the blood pressure by releasing the tourniquet could be fatal under certain conditions. Only doctors should do that. As a first aid worker, I rather prefer using the other hand to compress the artery. But in such a stress, only trained people could react the right way. At least, she is alive :|

[Seoulstriker]

:( :( :(

TOURNIQUET?

It looks like. She might be using a tie (?) to stop bleeding from her deep wrist cut. Not the best way to stop hemorrhage if you have an emergency service nearby. This method should be used if alone, lost in a remote area and with several life threatening wounds. Controlling the blood pressure by releasing the tourniquet could be fatal under certain conditions. Only doctors should do that. As a first aid worker, I rather prefer using the other hand to compress the artery. But in such a stress, only trained people could react the right way. At least, she is alive :|

yeah, it's a really deep gash. i don't know why she is using it, anyway. definitely not the best thing to do in that situation. it is just a 'minor' injury. her artery was probably not cut.

still, that's some crazy stuff.

notice the people around her aren't doing anything. :|

[Trigger]

You can't determine that people are doing nothing to help in a single image like this. Do you see what looks like a doctor's lab coat on the man behind her?
Regardless, RIP to the dead.

How many more of these mass murders before the western world says 'to hell with political correctness and world opinion' and really drops the hammer on these psychos?

[Seoulstriker]

You can't determine that people are doing nothing to help in a single image like this. Do you see what looks like a doctor's lab coat on the man behind her?
Regardless, RIP to the dead.

How many more of these mass murders before the western world says 'to hell with political correctness and world opinion' and really drops the hammer on these psychos?

i was just referring to the two people who are looking at her wound.

notice how al qaeda is going all out right now: it's really desperate. they lost their training bases in afghanistan, the US is not leaving Iraq even though terrorists are attacking british, turkish, american, UN, spanish, italian assets.

i don't want to sound crude, but every terrorist who murders innocent people actually is causing his/her cause to go down the toilette. every terrorist attack, we are strengthened in our fight against global terrorism.

[NcDeuce]

Powerful blasts kill at least 26 in Istanbul
British Consul General among the dead

ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) -- Powerful explosions ripped through the British Consulate and a London-based bank near a shopping mall in Istanbul Thursday -- killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 450 others, Turkish Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said.

Local officials said there were at least two bombings. British officials said they believed there were at least five bombings.

Ian Sherwood, chaplain of the British Consulate, told CNN that Consul General Roger Short was among 16 people killed at the consulate. One of the main buildings was "completely demolished," he said.

Sherwood said the consulate had been "secure as possible," but that the bombing was "huge." He said his house down the street shook, and the whole neighborhood was damaged.

It was the second coordinated attack in Istanbul in the last week. On Saturday, 23 people were killed in car bombings of two synagogues.

Video from the scene of Thursday's attacks showed shattered windows along the narrow streets near the consulate and some areas reduced rubble. People could be seen trying to remove debris by hand from around buried cars and rescuers with search dogs were searching for survivors.

Another blast, outside an HBSC bank, ripped the facade off the tall building. Video of a nearby shopping mall showed chaos with people streaming out of the area, some with bloody faces and blood-soaked clothes. Shattered glass and burned vehicles littered the street. (Full story)

Turkish officials said that bombing, in the Levent neighborhood, occurred shortly before 11 a.m. (4 a.m. ET).

Witnesses said they thought suicide attackers used explosive-packed vehicles.

A spokesman for Britain's HBSC bank said two of the bank's buildings were struck.

"They seem to be organized international terrorism," Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Huseyin Dirioz said following Thursday's attacks. Dirioz said his government will "fight against all sorts of international terrorists."

http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/WORLD/europe/11/20/istanbul.blast/vert.aerial.hsbc.ap.jpg
The blast outside the HSBC bank building in Istanbul on Thursday ripped off the structure's facade.

R.I.P. to the slain. Hope the hurt get taken care of and the situation doesn't get worse.

We'll hunt those raghead terrorists down.

Hope none of this shi* goes on when I go to Africa for the summer...

[EvanL]

SHouldnt she be holding her arm above the heart so as to not have loss of blood?

[Seoulstriker]

SHouldnt she be holding her arm above the heart so as to not have loss of blood?

yes, and she shouldn't have allowed a tourniquet to be put on either. :|