Turkey blames Kurdish rebels, Syria for Ankara attack

“Despite all the provocations and attacks by the Turkish army on the border of Rojava (Syrian Kurdish area) we have not responded and acted in a historic responsible manner”, the statement said.

The prime minister said authorities had detained nine people in connection with the attack.

Accusing Syrian Kurdish forces of responsibility for the Ankara bombing allows the Turkish government “to justify its strikes in Syria, especially amidst global pressure on Turkey to stop its bombardment”, Akram Saleh, a Kurdish journalist now embedded with the YPG in northeastern Al-Hasakah province told Syria Direct on Thursday.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said earlier Thursday that his country will retaliate against YPG, whom he held responsible for the bomb attack in Ankara that killed 28 people and wounded dozens.

A auto laden with explosives detonated next to military vehicles waiting at an intersection in the heart of Ankara on Wednesday evening, in an area close to parliament and military headquarters. The U.S. understands Turkey’s concerns, and has called on the Syrian Kurdish fighters not to seize more territory near the frontier, while also urging Turkey to halt cross-border shelling, he said.

Turkish leaders regard the PYD as the Syrian wing of the PKK, which Turkey and its US and European Union allies consider a terrorist organization.

The fighting in south-eastern Turkey between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK, is getting worse, and it is merging with the increasingly hot war between Turkey and the Kurds of northern Syria.

Although Turkey views the PYD as merely a Syrian branch of the PKK, the United States has backed the Syrian Kurds which have been one of the key forces fighting against the IS in the region. “Twenty-two people still remain at the hospital, including seven under treatment in the intensive care unit”, the ministry said in a statement this afternoon.

Mr Bystrom said that Swedish police were watching carefully to check that violence both in Turkey, and along its borders with Iraq and Syria, did not affect relations between the two communities in Sweden. “What happened there is related to Turkey’s fight with Islamic State, whose members live in Turkey”, he said, as quoted by Russia’s RT.com.

Meanwhile, Turkey said it launched attacks against PKK positions in northern Iraq.

On Thursday, the ambassadors of the five permanent U.N. Security Council member states were invited separately to Turkey’s Foreign Ministry and were being briefed on the attack, a ministry official said.

“It has with certainty been revealed that this attack was carried out by members of the terrorist organisation in Turkey in cooperation with a YPG member who infiltrated from Syria”, Davutoglu told reporters.

After the suicide attack Wednesday, Turkey also began directing airstrikes at PKK camps in Iraq and announced it will continue bombing YPG positions.

Davutoglu also had words for Russian Federation, which is conducting airstrikes on behalf of the Assad regime in Syria, and has entered a state of high tension with Turkey. The deadliest came in October when a peace rally outside Ankara’s main train station killed 102 people. Turkey fears Kurdish gains along its border will morph into an autonomous state and inspire similar ambitions among its own Kurdish minority.