Turkey again

At both bomb sites, men and women wept amid a chaos of wrecked cars and dismembered bodies. Thick black smoke rose into a blue sky as emergency services screamed through the streets.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the strikes bore ‘‘the hallmarks of the terrorism operations of Al Qaeda and associated organisations’’. ‘‘These were probably suicide attacks,’’ Interior Minister Abdul Kadir Aksu said on CNN television of Thursday’s bombings.

‘‘I heard a large bang. I thought it was an earthquake,’’ Adnan Akyildiz, who was working at the consulate, said. ‘‘I threw myself out of the window…the scene was horrendous — the gate, the consulate, the buildings were all demolished. Then I looked for my friends, I saw four of the other cleaners dead; two of them were husband and wife.’’ A street that moments earlier was teeming with traffic and pedestrians lay littered with rubble.

A witness reported a green van with the markings of a food company driving into the gate of the consulate as it exploded, the same devastating technique used five days before in the synagogue attacks.

Militant Islamist groups have long operated in Turkey but their actions have been limited to smaller attacks and assassinations. Actions over the last week will clearly prompt an urgent review of security by both Turkish intelligence and the US agencies that support them.

The first of Thursday’s blasts hit a wide avenue in the financial district, flanked by the towering HSBC building and a popular new glass-fronted shopping mall. The target of the second, the consulate, was set in a narrow street of older stone buildings in an area brimming with shops, bars and restaurants.

Bush expressed grief over the attacks. ‘‘Great Britain and America and other free nations are united…in our determination to fight and defeat this evil wherever it is found.’’

‘‘The terrorists hope to intimidate, they hope to demoralise. They particularly want to intimidate and demoralise free nations. They are not going to succeed,’’ he said.

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.

Western intelligence has long feared militants could launch attacks on ‘‘soft targets’’ in countries such as Turkey. (Reuters)