Turkey's Erdogan blames child bomber for attack that killed 51
A suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 carried out the attack on a wedding party in the Turkish city of Gaziantep on August 20 that killed at least 51 people, the president said.
 |
The attack was the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year, and President Tayyip Erdogan said Islamic State was likely behind it.
"Initial evidence suggests it was a Daesh attack," Erdogan said in Istanbul on August 21, using an Arabic name for the hardline Sunni Islamist group. He said 69 people were in hospital and 17 were "heavily injured".
A destroyed suicide vest was found at the blast site, officials said.
Islamic State has been blamed for other similar attacks in Turkey, often targeting Kurdish gatherings in an effort to inflame ethnic tensions. The deadliest was last October, when suicide bombers killed more than 100 people at a rally of pro-Kurdish and labor activists in Ankara.
August 20's attack comes with Turkey still in shock just a month after Erdogan and the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on US-based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen. Gulen has denied the charge.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding party was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt.
