Reports: Bomb blast in Turkey kills 2

Penn Live ^ | 3/9/2004 | Associated Press

[yonif]

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) — A bomb exploded at a building housing a Masonic lodge Tuesday, killing at least two people and wounding five others, reports said, months after four suicide attacks struck this city.

NTV television said police blamed the attack on a suicide bomber. CNN-Turk said a man chanting, "Allah, Allah," entered the building and detonated a bomb.

Authorities evacuated the building in case a second explosive was inside.

Officials sent ambulances and firefighters to the scene in the residential Kartal district, the Anatolia news agency said. One of the injured was reported in critical condition, television reports said.

The Masons, a secretive society that traces its roots to medieval craft associations, are active in this predominantly Muslim but strictly secular country.

Four suicide attacks against two synagogues, the British Consulate and a British bank killed 62 people in Istanbul last year. Prosecutors have indicted 69 people suspected of belonging to a local al-Qaida cell in the case.

Underground leftist and Kurdish groups also are active in Istanbul.

[yonif]

Ping.

[yonif]

Haaretz:

Suicide bomber behind blast in Istanbul building used by freemasons; at least 3 people killed

[Shermy]

The Hamas Constitution denounces masons, Rotary Clubs and Lions' Clubs as "Zionists."

I kid you not. Read it here on FR...

[swarthyguy]

Hmmm.

http://www.empnet.com/Rotary/india/

Rotary Club of Bombay Sion

[freeperfromnj]

This is a very odd coincidence. There was a shooting in a Masonic lodge on Long Island just las night.

[StriperSniper]

This is a very odd coincidence.

Masonic conspiracies need extra tin-foil!

;-)

[expatpat]

Sounds like the Da Vinci Code conspiracy guy has stirred something up!

[yonif]

Looks like it might have been two suicide terrorists.

[SevenofNine]

OHH Yonif I hear about that on fox news report

Latest toll i saw on body count is 20 on Sky news

[Mortimer Snavely]

I'll bet a dollar to a dime that it's the work of one of Salih Morzabeyoglu's disciples.

Screw the EU. This man should have been put in his wooden overcoat a few years ago, but Turkey abolished the death penalty to assuage the Euro-trash.

[miltonim]

Muhammad-inspired persecution of Christians, Jews and all non-Muslims continues...

[a_Turk]

Police seek clues after suicide bombing on Istanbul freemasons

ISTANBUL (AFP) - Anti-terrorist police sought clues after two suicide bombers tried to force their way into a crowded masonic hall, detonating a device at the entrance and killing one of themselves and a waiter.

It was the first such attack on the freemasons, who have included deputies, ministers, senior government officials and army generals among their members.

The two attackers shot their way into a restaurant on the ground floor of the building housing the masonic lodge in the Asian part of the city after wounding a security guard.

One of the assailants then set off explosives wrapped around his body, killing himself and the waiter, according to the city governor, Muammer Guler.

The explosion also injured six people in the restaurant, one seriously, but Guler said most of the 40 people in the room were unharmed because the device went off at the entrance.

The Istanbul governor said there was no apparent link between the event and four other attacks on synagogues and British buildings in Istanbul in November in which 63 people were killed and hundreds injured.

"We think it was organized by inexperienced activists belong to a new Islamic organization," a police official was quoted in the Hurriyet newspaper as saying. "If the attack had been well prepared the whole building could have gone up in the air."

But the newspaper Milliyet said the kind of bomb used on Tuesday was similar to those employed in the November attacks, which have been blamed on a Turkish Islamic extremist group linked to the Al-Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).

Police were waiting to interview the surviving attacker, who had abdominal injuries and lost an arm.

He was shown on Turkish television yelling "Damn Israel, long live..." as he was wheeled into the hospital.

Many Jewish businessmen and intellectuals are believed to belong to Turkey's five masonic organizations, which have some 14,000 members.

The largest of these groups, the Association of the Grand Temple of Free and Accepted Masons of Turkey, has been established for almost a century, and was influential among the Young Turk officers who helped create modern Turkey.

The freemasons have enjoyed freedom in this predominantly Muslim but strictly secular country, but are viewed with suspicion by ultra-nationalists and Islamists, who accuse them of having pro-Zionist aims.

Prosecutors have indicted 69 people on charges related to the November attacks, which struck at two synagogues, the British consulate and a branch of the British-based HSBC bank.

[a_Turk]

Two Masons who Brought Freedom, Turned Down Requests for Their Being Crowned Kings, and the Fruits of Whose Labor Flourish to this Day.

[a_Turk]

The deceased waiter and his wife.. He died when, instead of running away, he jumped the terrorist.