“And we also want to pray for the ordinary people of Turkey who bear the brunt of these attacks”.
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Preliminary reports said the two suicide bombers, one male and one female triggered the explosive device, while in the auto. Several vehicles had caught fire, it said. Additionally, 71 people are being attended to in the hospital.
Meanwhile, mourners held funerals for the victims of Sunday’s attack. (AP Photo) Members of emergency services work at the scene of an explosion in Ankara, Turkey, Sunday, March 13, 2016. Turkish officials blame ISIS.
Turkish airstrikes targeted Kurdish militant strongholds in northern Iraq on Monday, a day after a suicide auto bombing in Turkey’s capital killed at least 37 people and raised concerns over expanding violence from an internal war with separatists.
Nine F-16s and two F-4 jets raided 18 positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, including the Qandil mountains where its leadership is based. Targets included ammunition depots, bunkers and shelters, the agency said.
Turkey has been waging an all-out offensive against the PKK in parts of Diyabakir since December, but this is the first time clashes have spread to Baglar.
Some 30,000 people have been killed in the fighting.
Medical sources told AFP the wounded had been taken to 10 different hospitals around the city, with a dozen said to be in a very serious condition.
Sunday’s attack also came two days after the U.S. Embassy issued a security warning about a potential plot to attack Turkish government buildings and housing in one Ankara neighbourhood and asked its citizens to avoid those areas.
Earlier, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged that “terrorism will be brought to its knees”.
Turkish authorities believe it was carried out by a man and woman with links to the Kurdish militant group, the PKK.
Turkey’s Kurdish militant, led by a group known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, have battled for greater autonomy in southeast Turkey for decades.
July 20, 2015: At least 33 people were killed by a suicide bomber who walked into a group of student activists in the predominantly Kurdish town of Suruc near the border with Syria.
The PKK is blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Ankara, Washington and the European Union.
“We have learned with sorrow that Umut Bulut’s father Kemal Bulut was one of the people to lose their lives”.
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Istanbul football club Galatasaray confirmed the father of their striker, Umut Bulut, had been killed in the explosion after he watched his son play against Genclerbirligi on Sunday.
