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ISTANBUL, Turkey – A bomb exploded under a police car at a pop concert Sunday in southernTurkey (search), injuring at least 14 people, the prime minister’s office said.
A hospital official said at least 17 people, including two police, were injured in the southern city ofMersin (search). Two of the injured were in serious condition, the hospital official said on condition of anonymity.
Television footage showed a young woman lying on the ground with blood splattered on her pants and on the ground around her. A man could be seen helping another who was injured in the leg. Young concertgoers carried several of the wounded to ambulances as music blared in the background.
Mersin Mayor Macit Ozcan said authorities were investigating what type of explosive was used in the attack, which happened late Sunday outside the area where the Turkish pop star, Candan Ercetin, was giving an open-air concert attended by thousands.
A police bomb squad exploded two other suspicious packages in the concert area, Atilla Osmancelebioglu, the local governor, told the Anatolia news agency.
“A large scale investigation is being carried out into the explosion,” he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Militant leftist, Kurdish, and Islamic groups are active in the country.
Kurdish rebels ended a five-year unilateral cease-fire in June and have carried out a number of recent attacks, mostly in the country’s predominantly Kurdish southeast.
A militant Kurdish group claimed responsibility for August bomb attacks on two small hotels and a liquefied petroleum gas plant in Istanbul that killed two people and wounded 11 others.
Mersin has had several bomb attacks in recent weeks, including one at a building housing the local headquarters of Prime MinisterRecep Tayyip Erdogan’s (search)governing party and another at a bank.