“The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing”, said Veli Can, 25.
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President Tayyip Erdogan said it was likely Islamic State militants had carried out Saturday’s late-night attack, the deadliest bombing this year in Turkey, which faces threats from militants at home and across the border with neighbouring Syria.
“I lost my children, now I will never see them again”, wailed one woman confronted with the sight of rows of freshly dug graves.
Turkey’s president says the suicide bomber in the wedding party attack that killed dozens was between 12 and 14 years old.
Last June, several suicide bombers set off explosions at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport. At the outset of the war in 2011, Erdogan was confident that Assad would quickly fall, as the dictators of Egypt and Tunisia had.
The party also suggested that IS carried out the attack hours after another Kurdish political party announced plans to negotiate to try to end a three-decade conflict between Kurdish militants and the Turkish government. One participant, shop owner Ercan Yilmaz, 36, told the AP it was “always those kinds of people being targeted – a Kurdish wedding party, opposition groups or people calling for peace in Ankara”, referring to the peace rally attacked in October. The attack on Saturday in Gaziantep demonstrated how those conflicts sometimes overlap.
Ambulances are parked outside the police headquarters in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep on Sunday after a bomb exploded.
In normal times, Gaziantep is famous for its cuisine, especially baklava, the sweet pastry made with pistachios grown nearby.
“Over the years, step by step, Gaziantep became a host for IS”. Spies, foreign fighters, diplomats, journalists, relief workers and refugees passed through the city, sometimes all gathering at the same Starbucks. A US backed coalition of Syrian fighters and Kurds earlier this month drove IS fighters from that city after a two-month siege, pushing them into the countryside northward toward the Turkish border.
The police found an Islamic State bomb-making facility in the city, which they said was used in an attack in Ankara previous year that killed more than 100 people. Turkish officials said the assault was masterminded by Islamic State.
Earlier, Erdogan condemned the attackers. “Suddenly people started running past us”. “There were blood and body parts everywhere”.
The United States on Sunday condemns “in the strongest possible terms” the terrorist attack in Gaziantep, Turkey that has killed at least 50 people.
Saying that they wish mercy upon the victims of the attack, the club also extended its sympathies to the victims’ families and the nation.
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Authorities found a suicide vest at the scene, although it is unclear whether the boy bomber blew himself up or it was detonated remotely, the bomber’s age apparently giving authorities pause at assigning him blame.
