Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan previously said the child bomber was aged “between 12 and 14” and that initial findings showed Saturday’s attack had been “perpetrated by Daesh”.
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Twenty-nine victims of the attack, which took place on Sunday, were under the age of 18, reports said, with one official saying 22 were under the age of 14. Here & Now’s Meghna Chakrabarti speaks with Gonul Tol, an expert on Turkish politics.
However, Turkish authorities have now backtracked, with the prime Minister stating that officials were still trying to determine who carried out the attack and whether it was by a “child or a grown-up”.
One woman lost four children in the attack, the Haberturk newspaper reported.
Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey would provide every kind of support needed to “cleanse” Turkey’s border with Syria of the extremists.
But speaking to reporters in Ankara on Monday Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said it was too early to verify the organisation responsible or whether the attack was carried out by a child.
Turkish army howitzers stationed inside Turkey shelled Daesh targets in Syria’s Jarablous and the PKK’s Syrian wing (the PYD) in northern Manbij late Monday, a Turkish official said, stating that their presence in Jarablous was “unacceptable”.
Turkish authorities have said a destroyed suicide vest was found at the scene of the bombing.
The group has targeted Kurdish gatherings in Turkey for over a year.
A senior security official said the device used was the same type as those employed in a suicide attack in the border town of Suruç in July past year and a bombing at a rally of pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara in October. Therefore, hurling attack purely at a civilian occasion can have rippling effects over the embattled community of the Kurds who has been waging a prolong war for a homeland across three countries – Turkey, Iraq and Syria.
The IS, now being put under extreme pressure from all quarters-both by the Assad Army with the support of the Russian forces and the combined attack of the US-sponsored groups, mainly spearheaded by the Kurdish rebels.
“I can not recount what I saw”, said Ilter, who lost five young cousins.
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“It could be that someone was loaded with explosives without even being aware of it and it may have been detonated remotely”, the official said, adding a search was underway for suspected militants who may have played a reconnaissance role. Emine Arhan told the title “if it wasn’t for my only surviving child, I would have killed myself”.
