Turkey says Ankara Bomber Linked to Syrian Kurdish Rebels
Turkey on Tuesday said a female suicide bomber who killed 35 people in Ankara had links to a Syrian Kurdish militia, as security forces clashed with rebels in the restive southeast.
The interior ministry identified the bomber as Seher Cagla Demir, born in 1992 in the eastern city of Kars.
The ministry said she had been affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) since 2013 and then "crossed into Syria and received terror training in the YPG terrorist organization."
The People's Protection Units or YPG is a Syrian Kurdish militia that Ankara regards as a terror outfit linked to the PKK, which has waged a bloody war against the Turkish state since 1984.
Nobody has yet claimed Sunday's attack, which struck at the heart of the capital but the Turkish government has said "almost certain" evidence pointed to Kurdish rebels.
The interior ministry said a thorough investigation was under way and offered condolences to relatives of civilians who lost their lives in the attack carried out by the "separatist terrorist organization."
Turkey has stepped up its offensive against Kurdish rebels in the southeast, which has seen months of clashes and several towns put under strict 24-hour curfews, as well as in Iraq, following the collapse of a shaky truce last year.
- Fresh clashes -
More violence erupted between security forces and PKK militants in the main city of Diyarbakir late Monday when rebels put up barricades and burned vehicles, security sources said, prompting a swift response from police.
The fighting, in which PKK militants used rocket-launchers and automatic weapons, continued sporadically on Tuesday in Baglar district, an AFP journalist reported.
Security sources said a police officer and three "terrorists" had been killed, and around 10 civilians wounded.
The clashes forced civilians to flee their homes, with many seen carrying their belongings through the streets past burned-out vehicles.
Last week, the army announced the end of three months of operations in Diyarbakir's historic Sur district, where the lockdown has been progressively eased.
But special police units have started fresh operations in three other southeastern towns, which are now under curfew.
After Sunday's attack, Turkish jets carried out retaliatory air strikes on PKK camps in northern Iraq.
Police have also made 11 arrests in connection with the bombing, with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vowing to "take any step required to defend this country."
In a sign of the tension gripping the nation, one of the two bridges linking Istanbul's Asian and European sides was closed for nearly an hour on Tuesday because of a suspect vehicle abandoned on the road.
Bomb disposal experts found no trace of explosives, NTV news channel reported, while CNN-Turk said the driver had simply run out of fuel.
- 'Vengeance'-
Kurdish rebel leader Cemil Bayik warned Turkey to expect payback for the military operations in the southeast, in an interview published Tuesday in Britain's Times newspaper.
"The Turks looted and burnt everything they could in the Kurdish cities on which curfews were imposed," he said in an interview the paper said took place a few days ago in northern Iraq.
"So now our people are full of feelings of vengeance, calling on our guerrillas to avenge them. This is a new era of the people's struggle."
He said relations with Turkey were at their lowest ebb in the PKK's history and warned the fighting would spread "everywhere," insisting the group's guerillas were justified in taking any course of action.
Sunday's bombing came less than a month after a similar attack targeting military personnel killed 29 people in a nearby area of Ankara, raising fresh fears about Turkey's ability to deal with the twin security threat of Kurdish rebels and the Islamic State (IS) group.
The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a dissident PKK faction, claimed the February blast as revenge for military operations in the southeast.
The government described that attack as a joint operation of the PKK in cooperation with the YPG.
In February, the Turkish military targeted Kurdish fighters inside Syria with artillery barrages, saying that it was responding to incoming fire.
Source: Agence France Presse
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