Artillery fire is reported on Syrian town of Manbij and forces mass in Karkamış after weekend wedding bombing that killed 54

The Turkish military and allied forces have launched attacks on US-backed Kurdish militia and Islamic State group positions across the border in Syria, according to local media.



The Hurriyet newspaper said artillery fire had struck targets north of the town of Manbij, which a Kurdish-led force recently captured from Isis, while television reports described Turkish howitzers firing on Isis positions near the border town of Jarablus. “The fundamental aim in the latest operation is to open a corridor for moderate rebels,” a Turkish official said.

News of the clashes emerged shortly after Syrian activists claimed that hundreds of Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters had gathered in the border area of Karkamış in preparation for an attack.



Earlier on Monday, Turkey’s foreign minister had vowed to “completely cleanse” the country’s border regions of Isis militants, 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 south-eastern city of Gaziantep was the deadliest in Turkey this year. On Sunday the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the attack had been carried out by a suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14 and initial evidence pointed to Islamic State. But on Monday the prime minister, Binali Yıldırım, said authorities were still trying to identify the bomber and did not know whether he had been “a child or a grown-up”.

“We do not have a clue about who the perpetrators behind the attack were. Early information on who did the attack, in what organisation’s name, is unfortunately not right,” Yıldırım said.

His comments apparently contradicted those by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said on Sunday that the bomber was a child aged between 12-14 acting on orders of Isis jihadists.

Yildirim dismissed the “rumours” about whether the attack was conducted by a child or an adult and said security agencies should continue their work to find out who was responsible.

“Those who were behind the attack will be revealed, there is no doubt about this.”

A senior security official said the device used was the same type as those employed in a suicide attack in the border town of Suruç in July last year and a bombing at a rally of pro-Kurdish activists in Ankara in October. Both of those attacks were blamed on Isis.



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

Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said: “Daesh [Isis] should be completely cleansed from our borders and we are ready to do what it takes for that.”

The Dogan news agency said the death toll in the Gaziantep bombing had risen to 54 on Monday, and 66 people were being treated in hospital, 14 of whom were in serious condition.

A second security official said they were investigating the possibility that militants could have placed the explosives on the attacker without his or her knowledge and detonated them remotely, or that a child with learning difficulties had been duped into carrying the device, a tactic seen elsewhere in the region.

In Syria, Turkish-backed rebels are preparing an attempt to seize the border town of Jarabulus from Islamic State, a senior rebel official said, a move that would deny advancing Syrian Kurdish fighters control of the town.

The rebels – groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army – are expected to launch the attack from Turkey in the next few days. Around 10 Turkish tanks were seen in a village 2.5 miles (4km) from the border gate immediately across from Jarabulus. It was not clear how long the tanks had been there.

Yıldırım has said Ankara will take a more active role in Syria in the next six months to prevent the country from being divided along ethnic lines.

Çavuşoğlu said Turkey, a member of Nato and the US-led coalition against Islamic State, had become the “number one target” for the militants because of its work to prevent recruits from travelling through its territory and across the border into Syria.

For Ankara, Isis is not the only threat lurking on its frontier. Turkey is also concerned that attempts by Syrian Kurds to extend their control along the common border could add momentum to an insurgency by Kurds on its own territory. In the latest violence in Turkey’s south-east, two members of the Turkish security forces and five PKK militants were killed in clashes and attacks in the last 24 hours.

Some in Turkey, particularly in the Kurdish south-east, feel the government has not done enough to protect its citizens from Islamic State. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) said the wedding party in Gaziantep was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt.