A car bomb apparently intended to blow up a bus carrying military personnel exploded in Turkey yesterday, in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir, killing five people and wounding sixty-eight.

The device was detonated by remote control, Turkish authorities said, as the bus was passing the five-star Dedeman Hotel, which is 200m from a military housing complex. Pupils at a nearby school were injured by flying glass when the building’s windows were shattered.

Early reports suggested that two of the dead were soldiers, but it was said later that all those killed were civilians, including two pupils who had been leaving the school. Thirty soldiers were among the injured. The blast was heard almost 3km (2 miles) away.

Tensions have been running high in the southeast since Turkish aircraft bombed three times the hideouts of the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq last month. “After the attacks in northern Iraq we were expecting something like this,” said a local Diyarbakir journalist, who asked not to be named.

The soldiers travelling on the bus had been returning to their homes from barracks outside the city, the state-run Anatolia news agency said.

Turkish authorities quickly blamed Kurdish rebels for the blast. Two suspects were already in the hands of the police, according to the television station CNN-Turk. It was the deadliest attack by suspected Kurdish rebels on soldiers since 13 were killed in an ambush in the countryside in October.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, denounced the bombing. “Unfortunately terrorism showed its bloody face once more in Diyarbakir,” he said. “Such events will not disrupt our determination against terrorism. Our struggle both on international and national levels will continue with the same determination.”

This week the Turkish military had announced that it had confiscated about 500kg (1,100lb) of ammonium nitrate, a bombmaking ingredient, in raids near Diyarbakir, which is home to several large military installations, including an air force base.

An explosion on Wednesday in Istanbul, Turkey’s commercial centre, injured three people. The blast in a rubbish bin occurred in the same area where a bomb went off last week, also in a rubbish bin, killing a woman and injuring half a dozen people.

Turkey has amassed about 100,000 troops on its northern Iraqi border in response to PKK activity. In October parliament authorised the military to go after the PKK, but so far Turkish troops have limited their activity to small-scale operations across the border. According to the Turkish military more than 175 rebels were killed in the aerial bombing attacks, a claim that is denied by the PKK.

Rebels from the PKK have fought for autonomy in southeastern Turkey for more than two decades, a campaign that has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths. The group uses strongholds in northern Iraq for cross-border strikes.

Turkish aircraft took off from an air base in Diyarbakir only minutes after yesterday’s attack, the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency reported on its website. It was not clear if the jets were on a bombing mission.

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