Turkey car bomb kills three

A CAR bomb exploded in central Turkey yesterday, killing three people and injuring a governor and nine others.

Officials initially suspected the attack may have been carried out in support of the imprisoned Kurdish rebel leader, Abdullah Ocalan. But Turkey's chief of police later said the Turkish Workers and Peasants Liberation Army had admitted planting it. The bomb went off as Ayhan Cevik, governor of the city of Cankiri, 80 miles from Ankara, was being driven to his office. A schoolgirl, a man and the governor's bodyguard were killed.

The Turkish Workers and Peasants Liberation Army may have been targeting Mr Cevik, as he led a crackdown on the group when he was governor of the city of Tokat. The group has co-operated with Mr Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The governor escaped a similar bomb attack in 1997, when a bomb went off behind his office.

People in Cankiri accused the PKK of yesterday's attack, shouting "down with the PKK".

The Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, said: "If these terrorists think they can achieve anything with their banditry or save the person who has been encouraging them, they are wrong."

On Thursday a suspected Kurdish suicide bomber killed herself and wounded three others in the south-eastern city of Batman. Earlier this week the PKK's political wing said the rebels would extend their war for autonomy.