Hurriyet said the type of bomb used – stuffed with 2-3 centimetre shards of iron and detonated with C-4 explosives – was similar to that used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on IS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station past year.
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Turkey is hoping to see Jarabulus taken by a coalition of what they are describing as “moderate” rebels, but which in practice includes the al-Qaeda linked Ahrar al-Sham, which are preparing to attack the city from across the border.
Rami Abdul Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the Turkish shelling in Syria aimed to prevent the advance of troops backed by Kurds towards Jarablus. Manbij city was freed from the Islamic State group a few weeks ago by a joint local force of the Kurdish YPG group and Arab groups, known as Syria Democratic Forces and supported by the USA air force.
Sixty-six others were being treated in hospital, 14 in serious condition.
Turkish officials are backtracking on claims that a child carried out the country’s deadliest suicide attack this year, killing dozens of unsuspecting guests at a Kurdish wedding Saturday.
Another senior security official told the news agency that the device used for the wedding bombing was the same type used in 2015 blasts at a pro-Kurdish rally in capital Ankara and suicide attack in the border town of Suruc.
Monday, a government official said at least 22 of the victims were under the age of 14. It was carried out by a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, adding that initial evidence pointed to Islamic State.
For Ankara, Islamic State is not the only threat across its frontier.
“Our border must be completely cleansed from Daesh”, he said in televised remarks, using an Arabic acronym for the IS group.
Turkey views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish-Kurdish rebel group fighting for autonomy within Turkey since the 1980s. Erdogan blames the attempt on Fetullah Gulen, a Pennsylvania-based cleric who has denied any involvement.
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The authorities were also looking for two individuals said to have accompanied the suspected suicide bomber into the wedding party but who then left the scene. The bride and groom are said to be among the injured. A second security official said that they were investigating the possibility militants could have placed the explosives on the child without his or her knowledge and detonated them remotely, or that a mentally disabled child was duped into carrying the device, a tactic seen elsewhere in the region.
