ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – A minibus exploded Saturday on the way to a beach in an Aegean Sea resort town, killing at least four people. A doctor said three of the victims were foreign tourists.

The Turkish television station NTV said a woman blew herself up on the bus but Gov. Ali Baris of the resort town of Kusadasi said he could not confirm the blast was a suicide bombing.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Kurdish rebels have recently carried out bomb attacks in Aegean resort towns. They also have a record of using female suicide bombers.

Baris said the blast killed at least four people and injured 14, including several who were in critical condition.

Three foreign tourists were among the dead and five foreign tourists were critically injured in the explosion, a doctor at Kusadasi State Hospital said. The doctor, who declined to be identified, said the five injured tourists were transferred to Izmir, a port city 45 miles northwest of Kusadasi.

The Anatolia news agency, reporting from Izmir, said the five wounded were British tourists and they included a 16-year-old boy.

The blast gutted the minibus, scattering body parts on the ground around it. The charred body of a man could seen hanging over the twisted remains of a seat.

Bystanders helped remove the passengers from the burning wreckage.

Earlier this month, a bomb hidden in a soda can wounded 21 people, including three foreign tourists, in the Aegean coastal town of Cesme. On April 30, a bomb in a cassette player killed a police officer and wounded four others in Kusadasi.

A Kurdish guerrilla group that called itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons Organization claimed reponsibility for both of those attacks and vowed more.

Kurdish rebels have carried out several suicide bombings since the first one in 1996 killed six soldiers in the eastern city of Tunceli.

In 1999, two female suicide bombers carried out separate attacks injuring 27 people. The attacks, which targeted police stations, were to protest the capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Since 1984, the Turkish military has been battling rebels of Ocalan’s autonomy-seeking Kurdistan Workers’ Party in the overwhelmingly Kurdish southeast, a conflict that has claimed some 37,000 lives.

Fighting in the region tapered off after a rebel truce in 1999, which followed Ocalan’s capture. But there has been a surge in violence since June 1, 2004, when the rebels declared an end to their cease-fire, saying Turkey had not responded in kind.

AP-ES-07-16-05 0722EDT

Copy the Story Link