In cities and towns across Turkey they are burying their dead. It is a shared grief mixed with anger vented on the ruling AK Party. The chant of
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In cities and towns across Turkey they are burying their dead. It is a shared grief mixed with anger vented on the ruling AK Party.
The chant of “killer state you will pay for this” rose in the air.
The Turkish government says investigators are close to identifying one of the two suspects. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but three terrorist organisations are under suspicion. The Kurdish PKK, the leftist DHKP-C and the so-called Islamic State also referred to as Daesh.
“These three terrorist organisations are seen as potential suspects for this attack, but when we looked at how the attack happened and the general tendency of the events, Daesh has become the primary suspect,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on television.
Outside one of the city hospitals relatives and friends waited to hear news of the injured. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party has challenged the government’s figures of 97 and believe 128 died in the attack.
The bombs ripped through a crowd of activists who were about to take part in a rally. They were calling for an end to violence between Turkish government forces and the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party the PKK.
It was the deadliest attack in the history of the Turkish republic.
Security officials believe the bombs bore all the hallmarks of a suicide attack in July in Suruc close to the border with Syria also blamed on radical Islamists.