Turkey vows to cleanse IS from its border

ANKARA/ISTANBUL: Turkey vowed on Monday to “completely cleanse” IS militants from its border region, after a suspected suicide bomber with links to the group killed 54 people, including 22 children, at a Kurdish wedding.

Saturday’s attack in the southeastern city of Gaziantep is the deadliest in Turkey this year. It was carried out by a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday, adding that initial evidence pointed to IS.

A senior security official said the device used was the same type as those employed in the July 2015 suicide attack in the border town of Suruc and the October 2015 suicide bombing of a rally of pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara.

Both of those attacks were blamed on IS. The group has targeted Kurdish gatherings in an apparent effort to further inflame ethnic tensions strained by a long Kurdish insurgency. The Ankara bombing was the deadliest of its kind in Turkey, killing more than 100 people.

“Daesh should be completely cleansed from our borders and we are ready to do what it takes for that,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference in Ankara, using an Arabic name for the group.

A senior rebel official said Turkishbacked Syrian rebels were preparing to launch an attack to seize the Syrian town of Jarablus from IS on the border with Turkey, a move that would deny control to advancing Syrian Kurdish fighters.

The rebels, groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, were expected to assault Jarablus from inside Turkey in the next few days.