Turkish army howitzers stationed inside Turkey shelled Daesh targets in Syria’s Jarablous and the PKK’s Syrian wing (the PYD) in northern Manbij late Monday, a Turkish official said, stating that their presence in Jarablous was “unacceptable”.
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The attack in Gaziantep, near Turkey’s border with Syria on Saturday, killed at least 51 people and wounded almost 70 other people. Among the most deadly attacks was a bombing at a youth soccer game at a stadium south of Baghdad on March 25, 2016.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but officials said it appeared to be the work of the Islamic State group.
On Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the attack on Saturday night in Gaziantep was carried out by a bomber between the ages of 12 and 14.
Kurdish militia played a central role in driving the group from the Syrian city of Manbij this month, cutting a main supply route from the Turkish border to its heartland in Raqqa.
“Our border has to be completely cleansed of Daesh”, Cavusoglu said, using an Arabic acronym for the extremists.
However, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Monday that it was unclear whether the bomber was “a child or a grown-up”.
ISIS has a history of using children as weapons, sending them strapped with explosives and putting them on front lines in Iraq and Syria.
For Ankara, Islamic State is not the only threat across its frontier.
Turkey was deploying tanks and heavy weaponry on the border for the strikes, the reports added.
The attack comes with Turkey still shaken just a month after the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on US -based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen.
This follows a bomb attack on a wedding there that killed more than 50 people. Sixty-six people are still in the hospital, 14 of them in a serious condition, Dogan news agency reported. Gulen denies the charge.
“The security forces are focusing on it and trying to find clues related to it”, the prime minister said.
Turkish authorities have said a destroyed suicide vest was found at the scene of the bombing.
One mother, Emine Ayhan, lost four of her five children in the bombing while her husband is in intensive care, the Yeni Safak daily said.
Child bombers who are coerced often deliberately fail to launch their attacks, as the teen in Kirkuk may have done, she said. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt.
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More victims of the blast are being identified and our correspondent says the wave of bombings in Turkey could intensify as the country becomes ever more embroiled in the Syrian war.
