Ozcan, the security expert, said Saturday’s attack was likely carried out by a local ISIS cell whose members would have known the wedding was a Kurdish one and targeted the wedding party for the “shock” value.
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“Both the Ankara and Suruc attacks were blamed on Islamic State, reinforcing the suspicion that the militant group was also behind the Gaziantep bombing on Saturday evening, the official said”.
Two mortar rounds hit the southeastern Turkish town of Karkamis, close to the border and facing the Syrian town of Jarablus, which is held by IS, the CNN-Turk channel reported.
More than 50 people were killed, many of them children, and officials say the suicide bomber himself was between 12 and 14 years old.
The Hurriyet daily said DNA tests were under way to ascertain the bomber’s identity, nationality and gender.
“ISIS has used child bombers before; there’s a monitoring group in the United Kingdom called the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and they say ISIS used 18 child bombers in 2015”.
The PYD is a Kurdish opposition party with links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK – an entity Turkey has been fighting for years.
Çavuşoğlu said Turkey, a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the US-led coalition against Islamic State, had become the “No 1 target” for the militants because of its work to prevent recruits from travelling through its territory and across the border into Syria.
The Dogan news agency said the death toll in the Gaziantep bombing had risen to 54 on Monday, and 66 people were being treated in hospital, 14 of whom were in serious condition.
Without explicitly confirming the rebel offensive, Cavusoglu said Turkey backed anyone fighting against IS and would itself fight the group “to the end”.
The U.S. Department of Defense confirmed Monday that operations in northern Syrian city of Minbij with the Kurdish-led forces are ongoing, amid a “broader effort to prepare defendable positions for long-term security”.
The global reaction to the deadliest bombing in Turkey this year has been condemned as “hypocritical” in comparison to the outcry in response to the Paris and Brussels attacks.
The blast disproportionately killed women and children, as it had been timed to detonate during a part of the festivities when those groups painted themselves with henna, authorities said. The bride and groom are said to be among the injured.
“Our border must be completely cleansed from Daesh”, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in televised remarks. Some distraught relatives threw themselves onto the coffins, correspondents said.
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Reports said more than half of the victims are below the age of 14.
