Marxist Group Claims It Bombed U.S. Embassy in Turkey

Posted on Feb 2, 2013

AP/NTV

In this image taken from video footage, emergency personnel stand in front of a side entrance to the U.S. Embassy after a suspected suicide bomber detonated an explosive device at the entryway of the building in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Friday.

A Marxist group called the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front claimed responsibility Saturday for a suicide bombing the previous day at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey. An embassy guard was killed in the blast along with the attacker, who has been identified by Turkish authorities as 40-year-old Alisan Sanli.

In a statement released Saturday by the organization, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front condemned the United States as “the murderer of the peoples of the world.”

—Posted by Kasia Anderson.

The New York Times:

The statement, which also denounced American foreign policy, was released by the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, and a translation was distributed by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors the communications of extremist groups. The message, which was posted on a Web site that has previously carried statements from the group, condemned Turkey for its cooperation with the United States and for its policy of supporting Syrian rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

[...] The attack, coming in the wake of the attack on an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, by Islamic extremists in September, initially raised fears that it was the work of jihadists. That the bomber has ties to a relatively minor Marxist group is likely to challenge assumptions about the nature of international terrorism and the risks to American interests abroad. American officials, however, have not confirmed the identity of the attacker or a motive, and the United States plans to investigate.

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