Turkey ? Police found and defused more than 1,300 pounds of explosives packed into a minibus parked near a marketplace on Tuesday, thwarting what one official described as “a possible disaster.”

Bomb experts said the materials were similar to those seized in the past from Kurdish separatists. Turkey accuses Kurdish rebels of smuggling hundreds of pounds of explosives into the country from neighboring Iraq, where the guerrillas have been based for decades. Turkey is pressuring Iraq and the United States to crack down on the group in Iraq, threatening to do the job itself if others do not.

If authorities determine that rebels belonging to the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, were behind the plot, that could fuel debate about whether to stage a cross-border offensive to eliminate the threat – despite strong objections from the United States and Iraq against such a unilateral military move.