Turkey’s military launched attacks on the Islamic State group while its artillery pounded Kurdish YPG militants in different locations on the border with Syria just hours after Turkey’s foreign minister vowed to “completely cleanse” the area of Islamic extremists.
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“The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing”, said 25-year-old Veli Can.
The pro-Kurdish political party HDP also suggested that the attack could have been meant to exacerbate tensions between Kurds and the Turkish government, The Associated Press reports.
The YPG targets were hit 20 times, while the cross-border attack on ISIL was still ongoing, a Turkish official told the Reuters news agency. Both the attacks were blamed on ISIS.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the attack “cowardly and perfidious”, the AP reports, while the USA ambassador to Turkey condemned it as “barbaric”. The statement Sunday added that Vice President Joe Biden will visit Ankara Wednesday to reaffirm the USA commitment to work together with Turkey against the “scourge of terrorism”.
Speaking Sunday while surveying the wreckage, local resident Ibrahim Ozdemir said people are in shock.
People gesture during the funeral of victims of an attack on a wedding party that left 50 dead, Gaziantep, Turkey, August 21.
“Our friends and neighbors were there. The attack is an atrocity”.
According to CNN, a woman appearing on Turkish television said the bombing “seriously injured her husband, and killed four of her five children”.
Gaziantep, a city of 1.5 million people, is about 40 kilometres from the Syrian border.
The Turkish military carried out a handful of artillery strikes today against the ISIS city of Jarabulus, and many more strikes against the Kurdish forces further south, in the city of Manbij which they recently took from ISIS.
Turkey has been shaken by one of the bloodiest years in its modern history, with a string of attacks by IS jihadists and Kurdish militants and the botched July 15 coup.
The so-called Group of Communities in Kurdistan, the KCK, which includes the outlawed PKK, said it is ready to resume peace talks with Ankara, but said the government should take the first step.
The Gaziantep governor’s office said Tuesday in a statement that 54 people, including 31 minors, had been killed in the blast and 94 injured-13 of whom remain in critical condition.
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The deadly attack also came amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, and as the country was still reeling from the aftermath of last month’s failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on a US -based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, and his followers.
