Explosion hits part of southern city of Gaziantep -Dogan

chika ebuzor

October 16, 2016 1:24 PM

The blast happened during a raid by the security forces on a suspected militant safe house.

People gather after an explosion (Illustration)

An explosion hit the Besyuzevler neighbourhood of the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep on Sunday, wounding several people, the privately-owned Dogan News Agency reported.

Broadcaster Haberturk said the blast happened during a raid by the security forces on a suspected militant safe house in the city and that one of two suicide bombers blew themselves up.

A suspected suicide bomber killed three police officers and wounded at least eight people in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep on Sunday during a police raid on what was thought to be an Islamic State safehouse, security sources and medics said.

Police pursued a vehicle believed to be carrying explosives to the house, where a group of Syrian nationals were thought to be sheltering, and raided it, the security sources said. Gaziantep lies around 40 km (25 miles) from the Syrian border.

Four of those wounded were Syrians while some of the others were police officers, hospital sources said.

Turkey launched an incursion into Syria in August in support of Syrian rebels to try to push Islamic State from its border. The rebels said on Sunday they had captured the village of Dabiq from the jihadist group, a stronghold where it had promised to fight a final, apocalyptic battle with the West.

A suicide bomber suspected of links to Islamic State killed more than 50 people, many of them children, at a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep in August. It was the latest in a series of attacks by the radical Islamists in Turkey.

chika ebuzor