Another suspect of Istanbul bomb attack caught in Bulgaria

ISTANBUL

A PKK member who helped Bilal Hassan escape abroad, one of the suspects of the terror attack on Istanbul’s İstiklal Avenue last November, which claimed the lives of six people and wounded several dozen, has been caught in Bulgaria.

According to the examination of the records and the statements of the detainees, the perpetrator of the bomb attack, Ahlam Albashir, made reconnaissance of the avenue on three separate days with a pirate taxi driven by a man named Bilal Hassan and a member of the organization with whom she had come from Syria with before the attack.

Hazni Göl, who helped Hassan escape abroad, was detained at the Kapıkule border gate after being handed over by the Bulgarian police.

After he was caught in the hotel he was staying in in Svilengrad, police found out that he was wanted for eight different crimes, including murder, and that he was a PKK member.

A couple, a mother and child and a father and child were killed in the Nov. 13, 2022, explosion.

Police arrested Ahlam Albashir, a Syrian woman also linked to the PKK, who had placed the bomb and left the scene. Within days, many PKK members connected with Albashir were detained.

The deadly attack originated from the Manbij region in northern Syria, which the government considers a major source of the PKK/YPG, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said earlier.

Following the arrests, the Turkish army conducted a massive air campaign on PKK targets in northern Iraq and northern Syria. At the end of November, Ankara announced that a cross-border land operation will be conducted on the west of the Euphrates.