Turkey seeks to identify teenage bomber

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the bomber at the street wedding late Saturday in the city of Gaziantep close to Syria was aged “between 12 and 14” and that initial findings showed it had been “perpetrated by Daesh (IS).” Media said the majority of those dead were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18. At least 22 victims were under 14, a Turkish official added. There were no further details on the bomber’s identity, but Erdogan said IS had been trying to “position itself” in Gaziantep which lies just 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Syria and is a major hub for refugees from the over five-year civil war. 

The Hurriyet said that DNA tests were under way to ascertain the identity, nationality and gender of the bomber. It is possible the bomber had come over the border from Syria but IS is also known to have built homegrown cells inside Turkey in Gaziantep and Istanbul, wrote its columnist Abdulkadir Selvi. He said Turkish security forces believed that attack had been timed as retaliation by jihadists for offensives both by Kurdish militias and pro-Ankara Syrian opposition forces against IS in Syria. “There’s a fight against IS but we are paying the price,” he wrote. 

The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas said in a statement that “all of those killed were Kurds.” The bride and groom – a couple from the strongly Kurdish region of Siirt to the southeast – were rushed to hospital but not seriously wounded. The attack followed a string of strikes blamed on IS and Kurdish militants in the last months but was the deadliest so far this year and first significant jihadist action in Turkey since the failed coup. 

Hurriyet said the type of bomb used – stuffed with scraps of metal – was similar to the explosives used in previous suicide bombings against pro-Kurdish gatherings blamed on IS in the border town of Suruc and at Ankara train station last year. All 44 victims identified so far were laid to rest in harrowing ceremonies in Gazinantep on Sunday with relatives throwing themselves on the coffins in desperation. 

Turkey’s border region with Syria must be “completely cleansed” of Islamic State and Ankara continues to support operations in the fight against the jihadists, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. Syrian rebels are preparing to launch an attack to seize the Syrian town of Jarablus from IS on the border with Turkey, a senior rebel said yesterday, in a move that would frustrate Kurdish hopes to expand in the area.