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Bulgaria Charges Five With Helping Istanbul Bombing Suspect


Police block the street after an explosion on a busy pedestrian street in Istanbul, Turkey, on November 13.
Police block the street after an explosion on a busy pedestrian street in Istanbul, Turkey, on November 13.

Bulgaria has charged five people with helping one of the suspects in last weekend's bombing in central Istanbul which killed six people and wounded 81, prosecutors said.

Five people have been charged with assisting the suspect and giving him "logistical" help to flee, Siyka Mileva, a spokeswoman for the Sofia prosecutor's office, said on November 19.

Local television channels said three of the people charged were from Moldova and a fourth was from an unspecified Arab country. There were no immediate details about the fifth person.

Turkey on November 18 jailed 17 people over the November 13 blast, which Ankara has blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) it designates as a "terror group." The victims include two girls aged 9 and 15.

With reporting by AFP
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