A suspected Islamic State suicide bomber killed at least 30 people, mostly young students, in an attack on a Turkish town near the Syrian border yesterday.
Bodies lay beneath trees after the blast outside a cultural centre in the mostly Kurdish town of Suruc, in southeastern Turkey, 10km from the Syrian town of Kobani, where Kurdish fighters have been battling Islamic State.
The explosion tore through a group of mostly university-aged students from an activist group as they gathered to make a statement to the local press about a trip they were planning to help rebuild Kobani.
Turkey's Nato allies have been seeking tighter controls on a porous border with Syria that runs alongside territories held by Islamic State. But monitoring is difficult with 1.8 million Syrian refugees now on the Turkish side and smuggling rife.
The United States, which has an air base at Incirlik, in southern Turkey – although it is not being used for its air attacks on Islamic State forces – called the bombing a "heinous terror attack". Prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference in Ankara 30 people had been killed. "It is . . . most probably a suicide bombing."
The Hurriyet newspaper said the attacker was an 18-year-old woman, but there was no confirmation.
“Turkey has taken and will continue to take all necessary measures against the Islamic State,” Mr Davutoglu said, without giving details. “Measures on our border with Syria . . . will be increased.”
Huge explosion
One witness, giving his name as Mehmet and speaking by telephone, said he saw more than 20 bodies. “It was a huge explosion, we all shook.”
Video footage showed young men and women standing behind a banner declaring support for Kobani, some holding small red flags. Suddenly there was a huge explosion, apparently from within the crowd, sending up a column of flame.
The Suruc attack comes weeks after Turkey deployed additional troops and equipment along parts of its border with Syria, concerned about the risk of spillover as fighting between Kurdish forces, rebel groups, Syrian government troops and Islamic State militants intensifies.
An explosion also occurred in Kobani shortly afterwards, which a monitoring group blamed on a car bomb. A spokesman for Syrian Kurdish forces said two fighters died.
Defend
Turkey’s leaders have said they do not plan any unilateral military incursion into Syria but have also said they will do whatever is necessary to defend the country’s borders.
Ankara fears any disorder in the border area could reignite an armed Kurdish rebellion by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the southeast that has killed 40,000 since 1984.
It must also consider the danger of attacks in sprawling western cities such as Istanbul, where British and Jewish targets were bombed by al-Qaeda in 2003 with the loss of 60 lives.
Turkey’s Kurds have been enraged by what they see as the AKP party government’s failure to do more to stop Islamic State. The PKK held Ankara responsible for Monday’s attack, saying it “supported and cultivated” Islamic State against the Kurds.
Police in Istanbul fired tear gas and water cannon after a demonstration by several hundred pro-Kurdish protesters on the central Taksim Square turned violent. “Murderer Islamic State, collaborator Erdogan and AKP”, read one slogan.
A police helicopter hovered overhead.
The students from the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations had been planning a trip to Kobani to build a library, plant a forest and build a playground, Fatma Edemen (22), a member of the group wounded in the blast, told Reuters.
"I was behind a banner so I couldn't see the attacker, but we understand it was a suicide attack. I was thrown to the ground . . . I jumped up and began running before I even realised I was hurt," Edemen, a journalism student at Ankara University, said by telephone. – (Reuters)