Turk bombers originally targeted Israeli ship

[Anonymous]

ANKARA - A militant Islamist group which plotted last month's devastating suicide bomb attack against the British consulate in Istanbul had originally intended to hit an Israeli ship instead, the Milliyet newspaper said on Saturday.

Quoting Harun Ilhan, a Turkish militant linked to Osama bin Laden and now under arrest, Milliyet said the group decided to strike the consulate only at the last minute after the Israeli vessel failed to dock at Turkey's Mediterranean port of Alanya.

It did not specify the kind of vessel targeted, but the Cumhuriyet newspaper reported on Friday that it was a passenger ship.

Britain's consul general was among more than a dozen people killed in the November 20 attack on the consulate. Another suicide truck bomb exploded at almost exactly the same time, devastating the Istanbul headquarters of the HSBC bank.

The twin attacks came five days after similarly synchronised blasts at two synagogues in Turkey's commercial capital. The total death toll from the four explosions was 61, most of them Turkish Muslim passers-by. Many hundreds more were wounded.

Turkish media reports say Ilhan has confessed to being a member of bin Laden's Al Qaeda network and that he lived for a year in Afghanistan after evading military service in Turkey.

Ilhan was captured along with seven other men last weekend in the central Turkish city of Konya. On Friday he was taken to the site of the Neve Shalom synagogue to help recreate what had happened.

Turkish authorities said on Friday they had successfully dismantled Istanbul's Al Qaeda cell. They have charged a total of 44 people in connection with the November blasts and have seized an array of weapons and explosive materials.

Turkey, like many other countries, has beefed up security measures over the winter holiday period in case of more attacks.