Two people were killed and 16 wounded on Thursday in a car bomb explosion outside a local government building in the southern Turkish city of Adana, officials said.
The bomb exploded in the car park of the governor’s office for the Adana region, close to the vehicle entrance, the governorate said in a statement.
The explosion sparked a fire, and a cloud of dark smoke spewed into the sky.
The force of the blast caused damage to the governorate itself, the state-run Anadolu news agency said, describing the blast as a “terror attack”.
“Two people were killed and 16 were wounded,” the governor of Adana, Mahmut Demirtas, was quoted as saying by Anadolu.
“A vehicle blew up at 8.05 am (0505 GMT) at a parking lot next to the entrance of the governor’s office,” Demirtas said.
The attack is believed to have been carried out by a woman, the governor said, without providing further details of the nature of the blast.
As has been the case with previous attacks, the Turkish authorities immediately slapped a broadcast ban on footage of the blast.
‘Accursed terror’
“This accursed terror continues to target our people,” Turkey’s EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik, a ruling party MP from Adana, wrote on Twitter.
“We will fight against terror until the very end in the name of humanity,” he added.
With a population of almost two million, Adana is one of Turkey’s largest cities, lying around 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the Syrian border.
The US consulate in Adana in September had warned its citizens of a potential security threat targeting US-branded hotels there.
