Blasts kill up to 24 at Istanbul synagogues

11.30pm - By AYLA JEAN YACKLEY

ISTANBUL - Up to 24 people were killed and 146 were wounded Saturday when car bombs shattered two Istanbul synagogues as worshippers celebrated the Sabbath, officials said.

Turkish Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said he could not rule out the possible involvement of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, which has been blamed for attacks on other Jewish targets in the past 18 months.

"There were two simultaneous attacks at two central synagogues, the main synagogue Neve Shalom and another large synagogue, Sisli," Amira Arnon, Israel's consul general to Turkey told Israel Army radio.

Aksu put the death toll at 15, with 146 injured, but police officers at the scene said as many as 24 had died.

A radical Turkish Islamist group earlier claimed responsibility but local media said they doubted the group could mount operations on the scale of Saturday's attacks.

The chief rabbi of Turkey, Yitzhak Haleva, told Israel Radio: "I was praying when suddenly there was an explosion under us and all the windows blew open and I was left standing in shock in the middle of heavy smoke."

He said his son had been hurt in the blast at the synagogue in the Sisli district, named by Israel Radio as Beit Israel, and was undergoing an operation in hospital.

At the central Neve Shalom synagogue the scene was similar. Injured people covered in blood were carried on stretchers from around the building, the target of a 1986 attack by Palestinians in which 22 people were killed.

"We suspect car bombs caused both explosions," said Kadir Topbas, head of a local council in which one of the synagogues was based.

Israel denounced the blasts as "criminal terror attacks."

A radical Turkish Islamist group known as IBDA/C -- the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders/Front -- claimed responsibility in a call to Turkey's semi-official Anatolia news agency.

Yitzhak Bibas told Israel Radio he was among about 300 people at the Sisli synagogue attending weekly Sabbath prayers and suggested that the worst of the casualties may have been among passers-by rather than among worshipping Jews.

"I was inside. There was panic and everyone tried to get out. The lights went out and people tried to get out the other side," he said.

"There were wounded taken to the hospital. I think they weren't in bad condition, but those who were in the street were killed." He said a first explosion was followed by gas canisters going off.

Jewish sites have been targeted in recent attacks blamed on militants linked to al Qaeda -- notably in Casablanca in May and a Tunisian synagogue bombed in April 2002.

Turkey is among the friendliest of Muslim countries toward Israel and Istanbul, as the capital of the Ottoman empire, has a long history of Jewish presence.

"There is a high chance of sabotage (in these blasts)," CNN Turk television quoted Interior Minister Aksu as saying. The television said the blasts occurred at 9:30 a.m. (8.30pm NZDT) and many people were sick after inhaling ammonia released by the explosions.

The television network quoted Israel's ambassador to Turkey as saying: "The struggle with terrorism will continue."

- REUTERS