Turkey vowed to “completely cleanse” Islamic State fighters from its border region, after a suicide bomber with links to the group killed 54 people, including 22 children, at a Kurdish wedding. Turkish Foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in a news conference in Ankara, that the country was “ready to do what it takes” to drive the Islamic State out. Saturday’s attack in the Turkish southeastern city of Gaziantep is the deadliest Turkey faced this year. According to President Tayyip Erdogan, the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 with initial evidence attributing responsibility to the Islamic State.
A senior Turkish security official said the device used was the same type as those employed in a July 2015 suicide attack in the border town of Suruc and an October 2015 suicide bombing of a rally of pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara. Both of those attacks were blamed on Islamic State. The extreme Muslim group has intentionally targeted Kurdish gatherings in an apparent effort to further inflame ethnic tensions in Turkey, already strained by a long Kurdish insurgency. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Cavusoglu said Turkey, which is a member of NATO and a US-led coalition against the Islamic State, had become the “number-one-target” for the terror organization because of Ankara’s work to stop recruits from traveling through Turkey across its over 800 kilometer-border, which is equal to about 500 miles, into Syria to join the fighting.