ANKARA-Car bombs killed an American serviceman and seriously injured an Egyptian diplomat here Monday in attacks directed at the Middle East peace conference. 

A group calling itself Turkish Islamic Jihad took responsibility and said the attacks were to protest the US-sponsored Middle East peace conference that opens in Madrid Wednesday, the Anatolian News Agency reported. 

“We will not allow the imperialist powers to divide up the Middle East at the peace summit,” the agency quoted the group as saying in telephone calls to local newspapers Two years, ago Islamic Jihad took responsibility for a car bomb attack in Ankara in which a Saudi diplomat lost his legs. 

It was not clear if the group taking responsibility for Monday’s at tacks was linked to the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, which holds Western hostages in Lebanon. Fundamentalists in Iran have called on all Muslims to protest the Middle East conference. 

The US Embassy identified the American victim as Staff Sergeant Victor 31, a computer specialist serving in a communications unit. 

The the Anatolian News Agency said he was killed when a bomb exploded under his pickup truck in Ankara shortly before 8 A.M., as he was leaving for work.  

An hour later, a bomb blew up under the car of an Egyptian administrative attaché, Abdullah Korabi, tearing off his left leg and badly injuring his left arm.  

Turkey’s deadliest urban guerrilla group, Dev-Sol, which has killed two Americans and a Briton this year, has rarely used car bombings in the past.  

The group normally uses teams of gunmen in attacks that have also claimed the lives of a score of Turkish policemen and army officers, including two retired generals, this year.