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| The Grand Turk | ||
| Turkey vows to 'cleanse' border of Islamic State after wedding attack that killed 54 | ||
| 2016-08-23 | ||
| [Chicago Tribune] ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... vowed Monday to fight Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... Death Eaters at home and to "cleanse" the group from its borders after a weekend suicide kaboom at a Kurdish wedding, an attack that came amid recent gains by Syrian Kurdish militia forces against the forces of Evil in neighboring Syria. The bombing Saturday in the southern city of Gaziantep, near the border with Syria, killed at least 54 people -- many of them children. Nearly 70 others were maimed in the attack, the deadliest in Turkey this year. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but officials said it appeared to be the work of the Islamic State group. Authorities were trying to identify the attacker, who President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him... initially said was a child. However, the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits... Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Monday that it was unclear whether the bomber was "a child or a grown-up." "A clue has not yet been found concerning the perpetrator," Yildirim told news hounds following a weekly Cabinet meeting. He said the earlier assertion that the attacker was child was a "guess" based on witness accounts. At least 22 of those killed were children younger than 14, according to a Turkish official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with Turkish government rules. The attack came after the Syria Democratic Forces, a coalition led by the main Kurdish militia groups in Syria, captured the former IS stronghold of Manbij in northern Syria under the cover of "It appears to be an act to punish the PYD," said Nihat Ali Ozcan a security and terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, referring to a Syrian Kurdish group whose militia is fighting IS. "It's the cross-border settlement of scores by two actors fighting in Syria." Bomb used in attack on wedding in Gaziantep same type as previous ISIL attacks: Report [Hurriyet] Details continue to emerge regarding the Aug. 20 suicide blast carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the southeastern province of Gaziantep, with the mechanism of the bomb used in the wedding attack that claimed at least 54 lives reportedly being the same type as ones used in previous attacks. ISIL militants used iron marbles to strengthen the effect of the bomb and most of the deaths occurred because of the marbles hitting people, according to the preliminary autopsy report on the attack that killed a total of 29 children, daily Hürriyet reported on Aug. 22. The mechanism of the bomb was the same as the ones used in the Oct. 10, 2015 suicide attack at the train station in central Ankara and the ISIL attack in the Suruç district of Şanlıurfa. Both claimed a total of 142 lives and wounded scores of others. In footage obtained from nearby surveillance cameras, two people can be seen fleeing the scene shortly after the attack. Investigators are exploring whether the duo dropped the suicide bomber to the area and watched the child’s actions, the report said. Police are also investigating whether the order to stage the attack was given by Deniz Büyükçelebi, the ISIL militant “responsible” for the group’s actions on the Turkish Syrian border. Büyükçelebi reportedly replaced Yunus Durmaz, an ISIL “emir” who blew himself up in a police operation targeting the jihadist group on May 19. Durmaz was the mastermind of the Suruç and Ankara bomb attacks and the former Turkey “emir” of ISIL, according to an indictment of a case opened in March. The police on had found notes regarding ISIL plans to attack Kurdish weddings during the operation in which Durmaz blew himself up, according to a separate Hürriyet report. Durmaz had written to “higher-level” jihadists within the organization and asked for permission to carry out attacks in the aforementioned places, according to the report. “There are weddings taking place these days. If you approve we will take action,” Durmaz wrote. According to daily Cumhuriyet, Durmaz also asked for Kurdish-speaking militants to join ISIL, in order to “infiltrate them” to carry out the attacks. Meanwhile, police caught ISIL militants linked to Durmaz on Aug. 11 in a secret operation in Gaziantep, sending a warning the next day to police units that ISIL could stage attacks on sites linked to the Kurdish issue-focused Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) or the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in retaliation for the operation, daily Milliyet’s Tolga Şardan reported. Three ISIL militants, identified only by the initials as T.G., A.D. and G.D., were arrested in the operation in which suicide vests and bomb-making objects were found. It was also reportedly determined that G.D. is Durmaz’s sibling.
It is possible that the bomber had come over the border from Syria but IS is also known to have built homegrown cells inside Turkey in Gaziantep and even Istanbul, wrote its well-connected columnist Abdulkadir Selvi.
“We do not have a clue about who the perpetrators behind the attack were. Early information on who did the attack, in what organization’s name, is unfortunately not right,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters in Ankara, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the bomber was a child aged between 12-14 acting on orders of Islamic State (IS) jihadists. | ||
| Posted by:Fred |