One of the suspects was detained in house raids late Saturday in the Aegean port city of Izmir, where the bombing took place on Thursday, the agency said.

The second suspect was caught in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's Kurdish-populated southeast.

Police believe one of the remaining six suspects in custody was the bomber who parked the bomb-laden car before exploding it by remote control just as a military vehicle and a police bus were approaching it, the agency said.

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

A radical Kurdish group on Saturday claimed reponsibility for the Izmir attack as well as a suicide bombing in the southern city of Mersin on Tuesday that wounded 12 police officers.

The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a shadowy group that has claimed deadly bomb attacks in the past, said the attacks were "acts of revenge" against what it called Ankara's mistreatment of Turkey's Kurdish population, and warned of further attacks.

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.

Turkish officials say TAK is a front used by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for attacks on civilian targets, while the PKK maintains that TAK is a splinter group over which it has no control.

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 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.