Turkey blames Kurdish groups for a car bombing targeting a military convoy in Ankara that left 28 people dead, in an attack likely to further increase tensions in neighboring Syria.
The massive bomb blast struck five buses carrying military service personnel when it stopped at a traffic light in the center of the capital on Wednesday evening. Sixty-one people were wounded.
It was latest in a string of deadly strikes that have rocked Turkey since last summer and one of the deadliest assaults targeting the military in the NATO member state in recent years.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends the monthly Mukhtars meeting (local administrators) at the Presidential Complex in Ankara on February 10, 2016. (ADEM ALTAN / AFP)
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan both say the Ankara attack was carried out by operatives of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in cooperation with the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
“It has with certainty been revealed that this attack was carried out by members of the terrorist organisation in Turkey in cooperation with a YPG member who infiltrated from Syria,” Davutoglu tells reporters.
He said the bomber was a Syrian national named Salih Necar.
Erdogan says 14 people had been detained in nationwide raids across Turkey and that the number was likely to rise.
Police had identified the bomber from fingerprints taken from refugees who crossed the border to escape the war in Syria, the pro-government Yeni Safak says.
— AFP
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From the Liveblog of
Thursday, February 18, 2016
