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Turkish bombers target Kurdish region in northern Iraq

Davutoglu said on Thursday that the bombing was carried out by the Syrian Kurdish militia the People’s Protection Units (YPG), with help from the PKK and Kurds in northern Iraq.

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There has been no reported claim of responsibility for the Ankara bombing, and the PYD, YPG and PKK have all denied involvement.

On Thursday, Britain’s ambassador to Turkey, Richard Moore, expressed his condolences to the families of those who died in Wednesday’s deadly attack.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters that a Syrian national with links to Syrian Kurdish militias carried out the attack in collaboration with Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Turkey’s president says that despite denials, evidence obtained by Turkish authorities points to Syrian Kurdish militias as being behind the vehicle bombing in Ankara that killed 28 people.

On Sunday, the Syrian government had said Turkish forces were among 100 gunmen who had entered Syria accompanied by 12 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, in an ongoing supply operation to insurgents.

The main Kurdish militia in Syria says it has no links to the bombing in the Turkish capital, adding that accusations by Turkey’s prime minister are “lies” aimed at paving a way for a Turkish attack on Kurdish areas in Syria.

On Thursday, the ambassadors of the five permanent U.N. Security Council member states were invited separately to Turkey’s Foreign Ministry and were being briefed on the Ankara attack, a ministry official said.

On Wednesday, 28 people were killed by a auto bomb targeting military vehicles that were travelling near the Turkish parliament building in the heart of the Turkish capital Ankara.

“The U.S. has refused to name the PYD a terrorist group as it is cooperating with the group in fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria”.

A Turkish security source confirmed fighters had crossed the border but put the numbers at 400-500, and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence across the war torn-country, also said hundreds had crossed.

In this view across the city of Ankara, Turkey, smoke billows from a fire following an explosion Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2016, after assailants exploded a auto bomb near vehicles carrying military personnel in the Turkish capital, killing seve…

Turkey says a Syrian national carried out the attack. “Just as we don’t sit down with al-Qaida and Islamic State, we can not sit down with the YPG either”. However, co-leader of the party Cemil Bayik was quoted as saying by Firat news agency that he did not know who was responsible for the blast, but that it could be in retaliation to “massacres in Kurdistan”, referring to the Kurdish region in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

The rebel fighters, with weapons and vehicles, have been covertly escorted across the border by Turkish forces over several nights, before heading into the embattled rebel stronghold of Azaz, the sources said.

The attack came as Turkey had been pressing the U.S.to cut off its support to the Kurdish Syrian militias that Turkey regards as terrorists due to their affiliation with the PKK.

Turkey’s air force has been striking PKK positions in northern Iraq since a fragile peace process with the group collapsed in July.

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The attack was the latest in a series of bombings in the past year mostly blamed on Islamic State militants.

Tensions grow between US Turkey over cease-fire Syrian Kurdish forces