Bombers hit Istanbul synagogues

ISTANBUL — Near-simultaneous car bombs exploded outside two synagogues filled with worshippers yesterday, killing at least 20 persons and wounding more than 300. The government said the attack had international links, raising suspicions that the al Qaeda terror network was involved.

One blast tore apart the facade of Neve Shalom — Istanbul’s biggest synagogue and the symbolic center of the 25,000-member Jewish community in this Muslim nation — just as hundreds of people inside were celebrating a bar mitzvah.

Three miles away in an affluent neighborhood, the other blast hit the Beth Israel synagogue, where some 300 people were marking the completion of a remodeled religious school. Six Jews were killed at Beth Israel and many injured, including Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva and his son. Fourteen Muslims were also killed — including two security guards at Beth Israel and one at Neve Shalom.

The bombings targeted a secular-minded nation that is the sole Muslim member of NATO and a close ally of the United States — at one point considering sending troops to help in peacekeeping efforts in neighboring Iraq. Turkey also has strong military and economic ties with Israel.

Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said police were investigating whether the blasts were set off by suicide bombers, a timer or remote control. He earlier said the attacks appeared to be suicide bombings, but he said police were now checking footage from the synagogues’ security cameras.

The footage showed a driver parking a red Fiat in front of Neve Shalom, then getting out and walking away from the car before it exploded, police told the semiofficial Anatolia News Agency.

A local Turkish militant group, the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a phone call to the news agency, but police said the attack was too sophisticated for such a small group and said they were looking into al Qaeda links.

“It is obvious that this terrorist attack has some international connections,” Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said.

The Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front, which said attacks would continue “to prevent the opposition against Muslims,” has been accused in a bombing that injured 10 persons in Istanbul on Dec. 31, 2000.

Israel sent a police forensics team to help the Turkish investigation. “This wasn’t just an attack against Jews,” said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. “This is radical Islamic terrorism against humanity.”

A senior Israeli government source said the attack must have been at least coordinated with international terror organizations. The operation suggests the bombs “were the making of al Qaeda or Hezbollah,” the Lebanese guerrilla movement backed by Syria and Iran, the source said on the condition of anonymity.

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was headed to Turkey yesterday to visit the two synagogues. The two nations have developed warm relations in the past decade — the Israeli air force regularly trains over Turkish airspace and the countries’ intelligence services share sensitive information about military developments in Syria and Iran and about Islamic militant groups.

Al Qaeda is suspected in an April 2002 vehicle bombing at a historic synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba that killed 21 persons, mostly foreign tourists.

President Bush condemned yesterday’s attack in the “strongest terms,” saying its choice of targets “reminds us that our enemy in the war against terror is without conscience or faith.”

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