On March 9, 2004, an attack on a restaurant in the

Kartal Kartal is a district of Istanbul, Turkey, located on the Asian side of the city, on the coast of the Marmara Sea between Maltepe and Pendik. Despite being far from the city centre, Kartal is heavily populated (total population of 541,209) (2008 ...

district of

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

killed Hüseyin Kurugöl, a waiter in the restaurant, and injured five others. The two Islamic militants who carried out the attack, Engin Vural and Nihat Doğruel, were holding automatic weapons and had ten homemade

pipe bomb A pipe bomb is an improvised explosive device which uses a tightly sealed section of pipe filled with an explosive material. The containment provided by the pipe means that simple low explosives can be used to produce a relatively huge explos ...

s strapped to their

flak jacket The two components of an obsolete British military flak vest. On the left, the nylon vest. On the right, the several layers of ballistic nylon that provide the actual protection A flak jacket or flak vest is a form of body armor. A flak jacke ...

s when they entered the restaurant frequented by freemasons. Shooting the guard in his feet, they entered the dining hall and began firing at the forty people in the room. Then they detonated bombs at the entrance, killing Kurugöl. One of the militants died in the attack, the other was seriously injured. This attack occurred 911 days after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

. On March 11, the newspaper '' Al-Quds Al-Arabi'' received a statement which claimed that an al-Qaeda affiliated group, Jund al-Quds, ('Soldiers of

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

'), had carried out the attack. The statement's primary purpose was to claim responsibility for the

March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks The 2004 Madrid train bombings (also known in Spain as 11M) were a series of coordinated, nearly simultaneous bombings against the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, on the morning of 11 March 2004—three days before Spain's g ...

. In August 2004, the trial of the suspects began. While Turkish authorities said there was likely an al-Qaeda link, the surviving bomber, Engin Vural, claimed it was an independent act he planned along with the dead bomber, Nihat Doğruel. The prosecution charged that a man named Adem Çetinkaya, who was also charged, organized the attack and was also planning to bomb a private television station.

References

External links

Raid On Mason Lodge: They Were To Be Burnt
in Hürriyet 11 March 2004 * *
A list of Engin Vural news on Turkish media
* https://web.archive.org/web/20080628212915/http://www.barobirlik.org.tr/calisma/basinda_yargi/2004/03/16.htm * https://web.archive.org/web/20120208115823/http://www.mehmetfarac.com/belge.asp?select=254 {{coord missing, Turkey Attack on Istanbul restaurant 2000s in Istanbul Attacks on restaurants in Asia Attacks on restaurants in Europe Attack on Istanbul restaurant Attack on Istanbul restaurant March 2004 crimes March 2004 events in Turkey Murder in Istanbul Terrorist incidents in Istanbul Istanbul restaurant Explosions in Istanbul