To the International Community:
Today, on October 10, a bomb attacked took place at the rally in Ankara which was organized by democratic NGOs including KESK, DISK, TMMOB and TTB and which HDP had strongly supported. The rally was organized against war and AKP’s hostile and violent policies; thus hundreds of people around Turkey gathered to claim peace and put pressure on the government to end the war which has been conducted for over two months.
The demonstrators coming from outside of Ankara started to gather at about 9 am at the station of Ankara and they were planned to march from railway station to the Sıhhiye square where the rally would take place. Just after the beginning of the march, at about 10:04 am, two bomb attacks occurred among HDP cortege. For this reason, it is understood that the main target of the attacks was HDP.
According to the eyewitnesses, the explosions were carried out by suicide bomb attackers.
According to the latest information we had, there are at least 30 death and 126 injured people. Many of the injured people are heavily injured, so there is a fear that the number of death people may increase.
It should be indicated that there were no police around the crime scene when the explosion occurred. The riot arrived to the place after 15 minutes. But when they arrived, they attacked by tear gas bombs against the people who intended to help injured people.
We also want to express that this morning at about 6 am, one person attacked to our Headquarter in Ankara and he wanted to damage our building. Everyone can imagine that these events are not independent from each other.
This information is the latest one which we received and we will give more detailed information whenever we received more comprehensive one.
HDP Foreign Affairs Commission