An explosion killed two people and wounded over 30 outside the governors office in the southern Turkish city of Adana on Thursday, weeks after the U.S warned of attacks by what it called extremist groups.
Video footage showed a vehicle ablaze in the car park outside the building and thick black smoke rising into the sky in the city, 40km from Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.
Windows were blown out and parts of the facade of the building, roughly six floors high, were torn off.
The state media agency quoted provincial governor Mahmut Demirtas as saying two people were killed.
The agency said the blast, which occurred shortly after 8am, came from a vehicle in front of the building.
Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, the son-in-law of President Tayyip Erdogan, who was in Adana for a conference at a separate location, said 33 people had been wounded in the blast.
Adana is about 16 kilometres from Incirlik Air Base, which the U.S. military uses to launch attacks against Islamic State militants in Syria.
Families of U.S. military personnel were ordered to leave Adana and some other parts of Turkey in March over security concerns.
“Damned terror continues to target our people, we will fight with this terror to the end in the name of humanity,” Turkish EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik wrote on Twitter, saying he had spoken to the Adana governor.
The U.S. embassy in Turkey condemned what it described as an outrageous terrorist attack and said it stood with Turkey, a NATO ally and member of the U.S-led coalition against Islamic State.
Labour Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu, said Kurdish PKK militants may have been responsible and that 21 people were wounded, five of them seriously injured.
“It looks like the PKK were probably behind it again, as this looks like one of their actions,” he told newsmen.
However, there was no immediate claim of responsibility. (Reuters/NAN)