6 killed, dozens injured in Ankara bombing

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the blast as a "treacherous and brutal terrorist attack," but brushed aside a question on whether initial findings pointed to any particular group.

Police would issue a statement in due course, Erdoyan said, as he surveyed the carnage around the bombsite in the heart of the busy downtown district of Ulus.

He said there had been no initial arrests in connection with the bomb, which a policeman at the scene told AFP had been "placed at the bus stops" on busy Anafartalar Avenue, packed with people during the evening rush hour.

Sections of a four-storey shopping mall's entrance had collapsed from the force of the blast, timed at 6:45 pm (1545 GMT) by the Anatolia news agency, and the windows of nearby buildings were shattered.

Gruesome footage broadcast on the CNN-Turk channel showed police removing mutilated body parts and a bloodied man being carried into an ambulance.

Shopkeeper Mehmet Yilmaz told Anatolia he saw flames and dark smoke when he rushed out of his shop after the explosion. He said he helped a man covered in flames and saw mutilated limbs on the street.

The NTV news channel said police believed the bomb was made of A-4 plastic explosive, widely used by Kurdish rebels fighting a 22-year insurgency against the Ankara government.

"Unfortunately, four of our citizens and one Pakistani national were killed," Erdoyan told journalists at the scene of the blast.

Shortly afterwards, Anatolia reported that a sixth person had died of his injuries in hospital.

Erdogan said more than 60 people, four of them Pakistanis, were hurt in the explosion, while Anatolia put the number of injured at 76 and described seven of them as being in serious condition.

The news agency quoted a Pakistani military attache as saying eight of his countrymen were injured in the blast, all members of a delegation attending a three-day international defence industry fair that opened on Tuesday morning.

The explosion occurred minutes before the start of an official reception a few hundred yards away at Ankara's Museum of Anatolian Civilizations which was to be attended by delegations from 48 countries coming for the fair.