ANKARA: Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday that the authorities are not yet in a position to verify the organisation responsible for a suicide bombing which attacked a Kurdish wedding killing 54 people or whether the perpetrator was a “child or a grown-up.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after Saturday’s attack in Gazantiep that the bomber was 12-14 years old. But the officials said it appears to be the work of the Islamic State of Iraq and (ISIS) accusing it of trying to destabilize the country by exploiting ethnic and religious tensions.
CCTV footage from the area of the attack, said that the suspected child suicide bomber was accompanied to the scene by two adults. The two adults “fled in a vehicle just before the blast”, Hurriyet reported.
A Turkish security official said on Monday that they were investigating the possibility that adult fighters could have placed the explosives on the child without his or her knowledge, and detonated the device remotely, or that a mentally disabled child was duped into carrying the device.
“It could be that someone was loaded with explosives without even being aware of it and it may have been detonated remotely,” the official said.