ISTANBUL (AFP)
Twelve people were detained yesterday  after Kurdish demonstrators hurled Molotov cocktails and stones at  the police during a protest in Turkey’s biggest city Istanbul, media reports said.
The demonstration in Kucukcekmece district was organized to  condemn the  alleged involvement of security forces in the bombing  of a bookstore in the southeastern town of Semdinli owned by a  former Kurdish guerrilla.
Footage on NTV television showed protestors hurling stones and  sticks at the security forces and an armored police vehicle briefly  catching fire by what was described as a Molotov cocktail.
The police responded with tear gas and water cannons, Anatolia  news agency reported, adding that the crowd chanted slogans in favor of separatist Kurdish rebels fighting the Ankara government.
The November 9 bombing in Semdinli has sparked violent protests  and riots, mainly in the Kurdish-populated southeast, that claimed  four lives.
An angry crowd almost lynched three suspects after the blast.
Two of them were members of the gendarmerie, an army unit  policing rural areas, while the third was a former Kurdish guerrilla  now working as an informer for the security forces.
The government has promised to shed light on the incident.