A midday explosion in Turkey’s southeastern city of Suruc near the Syrian border killed 28 people Monday and sent almost 100 others to the hospital, Turkish officials said.
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It was the bloodiest such attack in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member Turkey since at least 50 people were killed in the town of Reyhanli near the border in 2013.
Photos and video taken from the scene show bodies strewn around a park and dazed people at the blast site while emergency teams rush to aid the victims.
The Turkish interior ministry has issued a statement saying: “We call on everyone to stand together and remain calm in the face of this terrorist attack which targets the unity of our country.”
A Turkish soldier helps people as they carry a coffin, after an explosion rocked the Turkish city of Suruc near the Syrian border on Monday, July 20, 2015, killing 28 people and wounding almost 100 others in what Turkish authorities said appeared to be an Islamic State-inspired suicide bombing.
Fatma Edemen, 22, said the federation of about 200 youths had been pressing for more access to help reconstruction in Kobani before the blast that police told her came from a suicide bomber.
A community meeting was being hosted in the garden of the cultural centre and included members of a leftist youth group, known as the SGDF, which is sympathetic to the Kurdish fighters in Syria. “It was a huge explosion, we all shook”.
Kurdish forces drove IS fighters from Kobane in June, taking full control of the town after a lightning raid by the Islamist militants.
Turkey has recently stepped up its role in the fight against the Daesh group, which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq over the past year.
“The death of citizens and the critical number of the injured as a result of this terror act saddens us”, Erdogan said in press conference in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
A team of experts has been sent to Suruc, neighboring the Syrian town of Kobani, and security forces have taken measures around the area, the ministry said in a statement.
A Kurdish official in Kobani, Idriss Naasan, said a second bomb went off in the Syrian town, causing minor damage and no casualties.
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More than 20,000 Syrian refugees are housed in camps around Suruc, which is separated from Kobani by little more than a fence.
