The identity of the bomber was revealed by a DNA test, the anonymous sources confirmed, adding the DNA samples provided by Somer’s father matched the assailant’s, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.
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Turkey regards the YPG and its political wing Democratic Union Party (PYD) as allies of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.
However, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) group claimed responsibility for the blast on its website on February 19.
It said that Abdulbaki Somer was believed to have joined the Kurdish militant PKK group in 2005 at the age of 16 and was based in the Qandil mountains in northern Iraq until 2014. But a government official said authorities now believe Somer crossed into Turkey from Syria as a refugee, falsely identifying himself as Naccar.
Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has reiterated Turkey’s call for the United States to recognize the PYD as a terrorist group while the USA has asked Turkey to provide it with more evidence of the PYD’s involvement in terrorist attacks in Turkey.
– Turkey’s Health Ministry says a man injured in last week’s suicide auto bomb attack in Ankara has died of his wounds, raising the death toll to 29.
Death notices posted online by the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a key US ally in the fight against Islamic State in north Syria, show about half of those killed on its front lines in the last three months alone were Turkish-born. Ten other people wounded in the attack are still being treated in hospitals, it said.
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Kurdish forces in Syria, where they have been targeted by Turkish artillery, said Thursday they would respect a ceasefire due to start this weekend but retain the right to “retaliate” if attacked.
