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Turkish police shoot dead would-be suicide bomber ANKARA - Turkish police shot dead a man carrying explosives after he attempted to blow up himself up at the justice ministry in a crowded Ankara neighborhood, media reports said.
Television footage showed a man wearing a beige shirt and pants, his hands cuffed behind his back, running awkwardly from the ministry building toward a crowded neighboring park before he was gunned down by policemen chasing him. The NTV and CNN-Turk news channels said the man had explosives on him and was planning to carry out a suicide attack. They said he died on the spot. The Anatolia news agency identified the man as Muhammed Akyurt and said he showed up at the main entrance to the justice ministry at 9:30 a.m. (0630 GMT). A detector went off, showing the possible presence of explosives and he was immediately overpowered by officers who handcuffed him. The man tried to set off the fuse, and two policemen were slightly hurt when the device went off without, however, igniting the main explosive, the CNN-Turk channel reported. The man profited from the confusion and began running towards crowded Guven (Confidence) park, television footage showed, when he was gunned down by officers who gave chase in the midst of frightened passers-by. Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, questioned by reporters, refused to comment, saying only that "an investigation is under way." The shooting took place in one of the busiest parts of Ankara, the Ministries neighborhood, in a crowded park abutting the city's main road, Ataturk Boulevard, and often used as a short cut between various busy thoroughfares in the area. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's offices, as well as the ministry of education, the appeals court and several other government buildings are in the area that neighbors the city's central Kizilay (Red Crescent) square. The body was still in the park more than an hour and a half after the incident, an AFP correspondent on the scene said, surrounded by bomb disposal experts and forensic scientists. It was not immediately known what group was behind the attack, but a similar incident blamed on the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) occurred on May 16 in the eastern town of Siirt, when two would-be bombers died in a botched attempt to blow up the local governor's office. The PKK, which waged a bloody campaign for self-rule in southeast Turkey from 1984 to 1999, when it proclaimed a unilateral ceasefire, resumed its armed action after calling off the truce in June 2004 on grounds that reforms undertaken to expand Kurdish freedoms were insufficient. Violence in the mainly Kurdish southeast has increased markedly since, sparking fears of a resurgence of the army-PKK fighting that has claimed some 37,000 lives so far, mainly in the 15 years preceding the 1999 capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, now serving a life term for treason.
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