Bulgaria Charges Five For Aiding Istanbul Bombing Suspect

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

Turkey on Friday jailed 17 people over last Sunday’s blast, which it has blamed on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) it designates as a “terror group.”

Five people have been charged over their “logistical” help to one of the suspects to flee, Siyka Mileva, a spokeswoman for the Sofia prosecutor's office told AFP.

Three of the people charged in Bulgaria were from Moldova and a fourth was from an unspecified Arab country.

There were no immediate details about the fifth person.

Turkish police captured the chief suspect Alham Albashir -- a Syrian woman who is said to have been working for Kurdish militants -- in an Istanbul suburb.

Albashir reportedly confessed to planting the bomb during her interrogation.

She said she joined the PKK Terror group because of her boyfriend’s influence and maintained her ties to the group after she broke up with him, the Turkey’s Anodolu news agency said.