‘Barbaric Attack’: 30 killed & around 100 injured in Turkey wedding attack near Syria border: Yesterday, late Saturday, around 30 people were killed and at least 100 wounded in a suicide attack on a wedding party in Gaziantep city, Turkey near the Syrian border, officials said.
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Relatives grieve at hospital August 20, 2016 in Gaziantep following a late night militant attack on a wedding party in southeastern Turkey.
The president blamed the Islamic State, which has been suspected of other bombings in Turkey, for the attack.
Saturday’s attack comes with Turkey still in shock just a month after Erdogan and the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on US -based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Supporters of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party will be holding a protest against the attack in Istanbul.
In Gaziantep, Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek and the country’s health minister visited the wounded and inspected the site of the attack.
“This is a massacre of unprecedented cruelty and barbarity”, he told reporters.
Gulser Ates, who was wounded in the attack, said she was had been speaking with her neighbor when the blast happened. A Kurdish rebel group claimed responsibility.
Turkey has experienced a year of bloodshed and political turmoil, facing the twin threat of ISIS and PKK militants and weathering an attempted military coup last month.
Erdogan said there was “absolutely no difference” between IS, Kurdish rebels and the movement of USA -based cleric Fethullah Gulen, calling them terrorist groups.
Three suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul’s main airport in June, then the deadliest in a string of attacks in Turkey this year.
As has been the case in previous attacks, Turkey’s broadcasting regulator RTUK banned broadcast of footage from the scene of the attack in Gaziantep.
Another resident in Gaziantep told Dogan that when he arrived, he saw many dead bodies and body parts including a “head, arm, hand scattered on the ground”.
The terror attack took place in the Beybahce neighborhood of the Sahinbey district of Gaziantep province, according to a statement by the governor’s office.
The attack also comes a month after a failed coup attempt against Erdogan. “It appears to be a suicide attack”. The fighting comes after a 2013 peace deal ending decades of conflict fell apart past year. Turkey, which allows planes from the US-led anti-ISIS coalition to operate from its air base at Incirlik, has also been in the terror group’s crosshairs.
In a statement, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim denounced the bomb attack and vowed to combat terror, saying it had turned the wedding ceremony into an occasion for mourning.
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Crowds of mourners gathered to pray, and chants of Allahu Akbar (“God is greatest”) could be heard. “They will not yield”.
