Blast kills two at governor's office in southern Turkish city

ISTANBUL — An explosion killed two people and wounded more than 30 outside the governor's office in the southern Turkish city of Adana on Thursday, weeks after the United States warned of attacks by what it called extremist groups.

Video footage showed a vehicle ablaze in the car park outside the building and thick black smoke rising into the sky in the city, 40km from Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Windows were blown out and parts of the facade of the building, roughly six floors high, were torn off.

The state-run Anadolu agency quoted provincial governor Mahmut Demirtas as saying two people were killed. Anadolu said the blast, which occurred shortly after 8am (0500 GMT), came from a vehicle in front of the building.

Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, the son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was in Adana for a conference at a separate location, said 33 people had been wounded in the blast.

Adana is about 16km from Incirlik Air Base, which the US military uses to launch attacks against Daesh militants in Syria. Families of US military personnel were ordered to leave Adana and some other parts of Turkey in March over security concerns.

"Damned terror continues to target our people. We will fight with this terror to the end in the name of humanity," Turkish EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik wrote on Twitter, saying he had spoken to the Adana governor.

The US embassy in Turkey condemned what it described as an "outrageous terrorist attack" and said it stood with Turkey, a NATO ally and member of the US-led coalition against Daesh.

Labour Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu said Kurdish PKK militants may have been responsible and that 21 people were wounded, five of them seriously.

"It looks like they [the PKK] were probably behind it this morning yet again, as this looks like their one of their actions," he told broadcaster CNN Turk.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The privately owned Dogan news agency said police had shot the driver of a light commercial vehicle which tried to flee despite being ordered to stop by a police team which suspected it was linked to the bombing.

It said an ambulance was sent for the wounded driver along with a bomb disposal expert to inspect the vehicle.