Both bombers are believed to be linked to Isis, whose members follow a fundamentalist version of the Sunni branch of Islam.
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The attacks happened yesterday evening, less than 24 hours after an attacker aged about 13 killed 54 people at a Kurdish wedding in southern Turkey.
The boy who was detained was…
It is the latest move by ISIS aimed at indoctrinating children in its Iraq and Syria stronghold.
Israeli media in 2004 accused Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement of tricking an 11-year-old boy into carrying explosives across an Israeli checkpoint near the Palestinian city of Nablus.
The bomb laden vest was detonated in a controlled environment. The Palestinian militant group denied the charge. “Children are taking a much more active role., receiving training on the use of heavy weapons, manning checkpoints on the front lines, being used as snipers and in extreme cases being used as suicide bombers”. The UN considers it to be 18, while under Islam and – by extension, in many Arab countries – the age of adulthood is 15.
Less than a day earlier, Turkey was less fortunate: a teenage bomber detonated his suicide vest among dancing guests at a Turkish wedding party, officials say, killing 51 people, almost half of them children themselves. The bomb was eventually detonated remotely, making for a chilling visual that recalled the destruction which would have been caused had the suicide bomber reached his intended target.
“Teenagers are easier to recruit for suicide missions, especially in moments of suffering or despair having lost loved ones”, he said.
It is not just in the Middle East where suicide attacks have been carried out by children.
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Erdogan said Islamic State was the likely perpetrator of the attack. UNICEF said that three quarters of child suicide bombers had been girls.
