Terrorism Hits Close To Home

The London bombings have occupied much of the news but there have also been recent terrorist attacks in Turkey. I have a friend working over there. He, his wife, and his mom were shopping at a seaside resort yesterday when a bomb suddenly went off. Here is the e-mail I just received from him:

We had a weird experience yesterday. It was quite a shock for us but we are all perfectly fine.

My mother, Emma and I were shopping at a souvenir shop when a terrorist bomb went off about 10m from us. We were very lucky to have not been hit by metal fragments but Emma was hit on her arm and shin by objects sent flying off the racks in the shop. The lady in front of her was hit in the arm by a metal fragment that cut a deep wound. We helped her until the ambulance arrived. We found the metal shrapnel or another one on the floor right in front of where my mother was standing at the time.

Being in mining a blast is nothing unusual to me but this was such a shock. It was of course without warning and the events of it are like a blur. It was loud with a strong air shock followed by flying objects and dust. My mother and I were behind the counter paying for her items at the time. Our ears were affected for some time by the air shock of the blast. Had we been walking outside the store when the blast went off we would have been on the injured list. Luckily the shop had several racks of souvenir items at the front that absorbed most of the shrapnel. A lot of those items were knocked over with the blast. The building next to us had all of its windows shattered.

My mother took some pictures and one is attached. These were taken two or three minutes after the blast. I have also attached some URL's of reports on this. The black mark shows where the bomb was. Three fragments of the post can be seen to the right of that black mark. We were in the shop that you can see bracelets on a rack on the left side of the picture. The bank that the reports mentioned was actually further away from the bomb.

The event has been on both BBC and CNN today. Have a look here:

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3