Turkey vows to fight IS after deadly attack

Turkey vowed Monday to fight Islamic State militants at home and to “cleanse’’ the group from its borders after a weekend suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding, an attack that came amid recent gains by Syrian Kurdish militia forces against the extremists in neighbouring Syria.

The bombing Saturday in the southern city of Gaziantep, near the border with Syria, killed at least 54 people _ many of them children. Nearly 70 others were wounded in the attack, the deadliest in Turkey this year.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but officials said it appeared to be the work of the Islamic State group. Authorities were trying to identify the attacker, who President Recep Tayyip Erdogan initially said was a child. However, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Monday that it was unclear whether the bomber was “a child or a grown-up.’’

“A clue has not yet been found concerning the perpetrator,’’ Yildirim told reporters following a weekly Cabinet meeting. He said the earlier assertion that the attacker was child was a “guess’’ based on witness accounts.

At least 22 of those killed were children younger than 14, according to a Turkish official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with Young boys known as the “lion cubs” hold rifles during a parade after graduating from a religious school in Tal Afar, near Mosul, northern Iraq. The suicide attacker who detonated his explosives amid an outdoor Kurdish wedding party in southeastern Turkey, killing at least 51 people, Saturday, was an Islamic State group child as young as 12 years old. Turkish government rules.

The attack came after the Syria Democratic Forces, a coalition led by the main Kurdish militia groups in Syria, captured the former IS stronghold of Manbij in northern Syria under the cover of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.

“It appears to be an act to punish the PYD,’’ said Nihat Ali Ozcan a security and terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey, referring to a Syrian Kurdish group whose militia is fighting IS.

“It’s the cross-border settlement of scores by two actors fighting in Syria.’’

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters Monday that Turkey would press ahead with its fight against the Islamic State group inside Turkey and support efforts to remove IS fighters from its borders.

“Our border has to be completely cleansed of Daesh,’’ Cavusoglu said, using an Arabic acronym for the extremists. IS “martyred our ... citizens. It is natural for us to struggle against such an organization both inside and outside of Turkey.’’ SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of — South Korea and the United States began annual military drills Monday despite North Korea’s threat of nuclear strikes in response to the exercises that it calls an invasion rehearsal. Such fiery rhetoric by Pyongyang is not unusual. But the latest warning comes at a time of more tension following the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a U.S. plan to place a high-tech missile defence system in South Korea. The North’s military said in a statement Monday that it will turn Seoul and Washington into “a heap of ashes through a Korean-style pre-emptive nuclear strike’’ if they show any signs of aggression toward the North’s territory. The North’s “first-strike’’ units are ready to mount retaliatory attacks on South Korean and U.S. forces involved in the drills, according to the statement, carried by Pyongyang’s state media. South Korea’s Unification Ministry expressed “strong’’ regret over the North’s warning, saying the drills with the U.S. are defensive in nature. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said they have no intentions of invading Pyongyang. BRUSSELS — A knife-wielding woman stabbed three people in Brussels on Monday and was later shot by police when she refused to obey their orders, prosecutors said. Police cars and officers converged on the area near a bus stop where the attack happened in the Uccle neighbourhood of the Belgian capital, while a police helicopter flew overhead. The attacker stabbed and lightly wounded two people on a bus, then fled and stabbed a third person at a nearby shopping centre. The reason for the attack remains unclear. The three victims “were lightly injured and they were all taken to hospital for first (aid) care,’’ said Ine Van Wymersch, spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecutor’s office. “The woman didn’t listen to police so they were forced to use their (fire) arm,’’ Van Wymersch said. Belgium has been on alert since suicide bombings on Brussels’ airport and subway killed 32 people on March 22. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group.