Two attackers, including a suicide bomber, carried out an explosion in the heart of the Turkish capital, the country’s interior ministry said, as authorities launched an investigation into the “terrorist” attack.
In the first explosion in the capital in years, both attackers were killed, one blew himself up and two police officers were injured.
They drove up to the main entrance of the building and triggered the explosion in the area of the ministerial buildings and parliament, the interior minister said. The explosion killed one of the attackers and authorities “neutralized” the other, he added.
Footage taken by Portal news agency after the explosion showed a parked Renault truck with broken windows and open doors amid scattered debris on the street, surrounded by soldiers, police, ambulances, fire engines and armored vehicles.
The bomb on Ataturk Boulevard was the first in Ankara since 2016 and occurred on the day President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is due to attend the opening session of parliament a kilometer away.
A senior Turkish official told Portal the attackers hijacked the vehicle and killed its driver in Kayseri, a city 260 km (161 miles) southeast of Ankara, before carrying out the attack. One of the injured officers suffered injuries from shrapnel, he added.
“Two terrorists came to the entrance gate of the General Directorate of Security of our Interior Ministry in a light commercial vehicle and carried out a bomb attack,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said earlier on the social media platform X known as Twitter.
He added that one blew himself up and the other was “neutralized”, which usually means he was killed, while the two officers received minor injuries in the incident at 9:30 a.m. (0630 GMT).
Police also announced that they would carry out controlled demolitions in “suspicious package incidents” in other parts of Ankara.
Authorities did not identify a specific armed group.
The incident comes almost a year after an explosion on a busy pedestrian street in central Istanbul killed six people and injured 81. Turkey blamed Kurdish militants for the explosion.
Erdogan was due to attend the 7:30 p.m. opening of parliament, which is expected to consider ratifying Sweden’s bid to join NATO in the coming weeks after Turkey raised initial objections and delayed the bloc’s expansion.
European Council President Charles Michel said he strongly condemned what he called a “terrorist” attack, while EU Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi said it supported Turkey “in its fight against terrorism.”