Factbox-Deadly Istanbul blast echoes past attacks in Turkey

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey blamed Kurdish militants for a blast that killed six people on a busy Istanbul shopping street on Sunday, and police detained a Syrian woman suspected of having planted the bomb among a sweep of 47 arrests.

The blast, the first to hit Istanbul in a number of years, has reminded Turks of a wave of attacks carried out by various militant groups targeting Turkish cities between mid-2015 and early 2017.

Following are some of those deadly attacks:

Jan 5, 2017 – A Turkish police officer and a courthouse employee were killed by a car bomb in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir while at least 10 people were wounded. Authorities said Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants were behind the attack.

Dec 31, 2016 – Islamic State claimed responsibility for a New Year’s Day mass shooting in which 39 people were killed after a lone gunman opened fire in a packed Istanbul nightclub.

Dec 17, 2016 – A car bomb killed 13 soldiers and wounded 56 when it tore through a bus carrying off-duty military personnel in the central city of Kayseri. An offshoot of the PKK claimed responsibility for the attack.

Dec 10, 2016 – Twin bombings, one planted in a car and the other strapped to a suicide bomber, killed 44 people, most of them police officers, and wounded more than 150 outside an Istanbul soccer stadium. A PKK offshoot, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), claimed responsibility for the attack.

Aug 26, 2016 – A suicide truck bombing at a police headquarters in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast killed at least 11 and wounded dozens. The PKK claimed responsibility for the attack.

Aug 20, 2016 – A suicide bomber carried out an attack on a wedding party in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep that killed at least 51 people. President Tayyip Erdogan said the attacker had worked with the Islamic State.

June 28, 2016 – A triple suicide bombing and a gun attack killed 45 people and wounded more than 160 people at Istanbul’s main airport. Turkey handed down life sentences to people linked to the perpetrators of the attack, believed to have been involved with Islamic State.

May 12, 2016 – Explosives that detonated in a village in southeastern Turkey killed 16 people, had been intended for use in a suicide bombing in the nearby province of Diyarbakir. Kurdish militants were believed to have been transporting the explosives, security sources have said.

March 19, 2016 – A suicide bomber killed four people in a busy shopping district of Istiklal Street in the heart of Istanbul. Authorities confirmed three Israelis, two of them holding dual U.S. citizenship, and an Iranian citizen died as a result of the blast. Authorities said a Turkish member of the Islamic State militant group was responsible for the bombing.

March 13, 2016 – Thirty-seven people were killed when a bomb-laden car exploded at a crowded transport hub in the heart of the Turkish capital Ankara.

Feb 17, 2016 – Twenty-eight people were killed and dozens wounded in Ankara when a car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses near the armed forces’ headquarters, parliament and other government buildings.

Jan 12, 2016 – A suicide bomber killed at least 10 people, most of them German tourists, in Istanbul’s historic heart in an attack then authorities blamed on Islamic State.

Oct 10, 2015 – Twin bombings in Ankara killed more than 100 people outside the city’s main train station. Turkish courts jailed perpetrators, who are believed to be linked to the Islamic State, for life.

Sept 8, 2015 – Kurdish militants killed 15 police officers in two bombings in eastern Turkish provinces of Mardin and Igdir.

July 20, 2015 – An Islamic State suicide bomber killed more than 30 people, mostly young students, in an attack on the mainly ethnic Kurdish town of Suruc near the Syrian border.

(Reporting by Azra Ceylan in Istanbul and Canan Sevgili and Halilcan Soran in Gdansk; Editing by Gareth Jones)