Prime Minister Binali Yilidirm has said Turkey would take a more active role in Syria in the next six months to prevent the country from being divided along ethnic lines.
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ISIS, which has used children in combat or to act as human bombs in attacks across the Middle East, is suspected in the attack, Erdogan said. As the war waged on, Turkey increasingly found itself drawn in, with millions of refugees fleeing across the border and the past year has seen a series of deadly attacks within Turkey. Erdogan said Sunday it was carried out by a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14, adding that initial evidence pointed to the Islamic State group.
In addition to attacks on Kurds in Turkey and tourists in Istanbul, Daesh also was blamed for the June assault on the country’s main Ataturk global airport, killing more than 40 people.
“We wish God’s mercy for those who have lost their lives in this cruel attack, and for the injured, a quick recovery”, the Gaziantep governor’s office said in its statement, according to Reuters. One past year in Ankara killed 100 people.
The bomb struck in crowded streets of the Beybahce neighborhood of Gaziantep’s Sahinbey district during celebrations for the wedding of a Kurdish couple.
Turkish authorities have said a destroyed suicide vest was found at the scene of the bombing.
CNN-Turk and NTV channels later reported that Turkish armed forces launched artillery strikes on separate targets of IS jihadists and the Democratic Union Party (PYD) Kurdish militia in northern Syria.
In a statement released on Sunday, Hezbollah described the crime as a “terrorist” attack and offered its condolences to the Turkish people and the victims’ families.
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. He lost five young cousins in the attack.
Without explicitly confirming the rebel offensive, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey backed anyone fighting against the IS group and would itself fight the group “to the end”.
The organization has eulogized more than 250 child attackers on its channels on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app the terror group widely uses.
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The pro-Kurdish political party HDP condemned the attack on the wedding, which it said was attended by many of its party members. They were aged 13, 14.
