At least five people have been killed and 22 others wounded in an attack on the headquarters of Tuaerospace and defence company Turkish Aerospace Industries, TUSAS, near the capital Ankara, President Tayyib Erdogan has said.
Erdogan, who was holding talks in Russia with Vladimir Putin at the time of the attack on Wednesday, confirmed the toll, and condemned what he said was a “heinous terrorist attack”.
“Two terrorists were neutralised” in the incident at the headquarters of the state-run firm, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X. The minister said those killed included a male and a female attacker.
Footage from the scene broadcast by local media just after the attack, which took place at 3:30pm local time (12:30 GMT), showed huge clouds of smoke and a large fire raging at the site in Kahramankazan, a small town some 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Ankara.
According to local media reports, there was a loud explosion at the site and subsequent gunfire.
Security camera images from the attack, aired by broadcasters, showed a man in plainclothes carrying a backpack and holding an assault rifle. The images also appeared to show a woman carrying a weapon.
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“Having looked at the images and spoken with sources, we’re talking about three attackers,” said Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Ankara.
“There are claims that attackers who infiltrated took some of the workers as hostage, but we don’t have further details,” she said, adding that 15,000 people work at the company’s campus in Kahramankazan.
“Apparently, the attackers had information about the building, about the entrances,” Koseoglu continued, explaining that the attackers approached the employees’ entrance. “Many of the experts now suggest that this was a strategically planned terrorist attack.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the justice minister said an investigation had been opened. Yerlikaya pointed the finger at the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the government.
“The identification process and the search for fingerprints are continuing and we will say which terrorist organisation was behind the attack” Yerlikaya said, adding that “the way in which this action was carried out is very probably linked to the PKK.”
Earlier this week, the leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, which belongs to Erdogan’s ruling coalition, invited jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to address parliament to announce his movement’s dissolution.
Reported by Aljazeera
