ANKARA // At least 28 people were killed and 61 wounded in a car bomb targeting the Turkish military in the capital Ankara on Wednesday.
The attack was aimed at a convoy of military service vehicles, Ankara governor Mehmet Kiliclar said, quoted by the CNN-Turk and NTV channels.
Plumes of smoke were seen rising over an area and the powerful blast was heard all over the city, sending residents to their balconies in panic.
Ambulances and fire engines were sent to the scene, which is near the Turkish military headquarters and the parliament.
NTV television said the explosion happened near a residential block for top-level military staff.
Omer Celik, spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), said he strongly condemned the attack, Turkish media reported.
Turkish police have put up a security cordon around the area.
There was no immediate indication about who carried out the attack, but ISIL has been blamed for a string of bombings in the country since the middle of last year.
The capital was already on alert after 103 people were killed last October when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of peace activists in Ankara, the bloodiest attack in the country's modern history.
Eleven people, all German tourists, were also killed last month when a suicide bomber blew himself up in the tourist heart of Istanbul.
Those attacks were blamed on ISIL, as were two other deadly bombings in the country's Kurdish-dominated south-east earlier last year.
Turkish authorities have detained several suspected ISIL members in recent weeks, with officials saying they were planning attacks in Istanbul and Ankara.
But Turkey is also waging an all-out assault on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has staged dozens of deadly attacks against members of the security forces in the south-east.
The PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984, initially fighting for Kurdish independence although now more for greater autonomy and rights for the country's largest ethnic minority.
The conflict, which has left tens of thousands of people dead, looked like it could be nearing a resolution until an uneasy truce was shattered in July.
Ankara has also been carrying out air strikes against Syrian Kurdish fighters across the border with war-torn Syria since the weekend.
A Kurdish splinter group, the Freedom Falcons of Kurdistan (TAK), claimed a mortar attack on Istanbul's second international airport on December 23 which killed a female cleaner and damaged several planes.
Meanwhile the banned ultra-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) has also staged a string of mostly small-scale attacks in Istanbul over the last few months.
* Agence France-Presse
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