Three people were arrested in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's Kurdish-populated southeast which has been the theatre of a 24-year Kurdish insurgency, the agency quoted Izmir Governor Cahit Kirac as saying.

The remaining suspects were detained in the Aegean port of Izmir, Kirac said, without giving further details.

In Thursday's attack a bomb-laden car, parked in a residential area, was exploded by remote control just as a military car and a police bus were approaching it.

The explosion left seven policemen, three soldiers -- including a colonel -- and six civilians wounded.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a shadowy group that has claimed deadly bomb attacks in the past, said Saturday that it was behind the Izmir attack as well as a suicide bombing in the southern city of Mersin on Tuesday that wounded 12 police officers.

In a statement posted on its website, the group said the attacks were "acts of revenge" against what it called Ankara's mistreatment of its Kurdish population, and warned of further attacks.

"We are and will continue to claim a heavy price for the attacks against our people and national values," the statement said.

In February, TAK had threatened attacks against security forces, tourist centres and economic facilities in response to Turkish air strikes on hideouts of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq.

Turkish officials say TAK is a front for PKK attacks on civilian targets, while the PKK maintains that it is a splinter group over which it has no control.

TAK has claimed responsibility for several bomb attacks in Turkey's urban centres and tourist areas, the worst of which killed five people, including two foreign tourists, in the Aegean resort of Kusadasi, south of Izmir, in 2005.

More than 37,000 people have died since 1984 when the PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, took up arms for self-rule in southeastern Turkey.

PKK rebels routinely target Turkish security forces in the southeast of the country, but have also been blamed by Ankara for a string of bomb attacks in cities.

Authorities suspect the PKK to be behind two bomb attacks in a crowded street in Istanbul on July 27, which killed 17 people, among them five children, and wounded more than 150.