10 injured in explosion at Kurdish rally in Turkey

At least 10 people were injured today in two explosions five minutes apart at a Kurdish party election rally in southeast Turkey, attended by thousands of people, witnesses and reports said.
The explosions occurred at the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party final election rally in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast, as the party's leader Selahattin Demirtas was preparing to address the crowd.
Rally organisers urged calm, saying a malfunctioning power distribution unit caused the explosions, but witnesses said there were two separate blasts spaced by five minutes that they believed were caused by bombs.
The explosions come at a tense time, two days before Sunday's parliamentary elections in Turkey, in which the Kurdish votes will be critical.

The party is vying to pass the threshold of 10 per cent of total votes required to take seats in parliament. If it succeeds it could make it impossible for the ruling AKP to reach a supermajority in parliament.
That would scuttle the AKP's ambitions to introduce a new constitution and change Turkey's parliamentary system into a presidential system that could give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan executive powers.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said authorities would investigate the cause of the explosions.
"Whatever is behind this incident, whether it was a power transformer explosion, an assassination attempt, an act of provocation, we shall investigate it," he said.

The rally was cancelled but a large group of youths remained at the site, protesting the explosions. Some threw stones at a police water canon that moved in to disperse the crowd.
Demirtas urged calm and asked supporters not to "respond to provocations.