Kurdish militant groups blamed for deadly Ankara blast
The rush hour car-bomb attack on Wednesday evening targeted buses carrying military personnel, killing 28 people and injuring dozens.
It came as Turkey grapples with an array of issues, including renewed fighting with Kurdish rebels, the threat from IS militants and the Syria refugee crisis.
It was the second deadly bombing in Ankara in four months.
Prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters that a Syrian national with links to Syrian Kurdish militias carried out the attack in collaboration with Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
Mr Davutoglu also blamed Syria’s government for allegedly backing the Syrian Kurdish militia.
The attack came as Turkey had been pressing the US to cut off support to the Kurdish Syrian militias, which Turkey regards as terrorists because of their affiliation with the PKK.
The US already lists the PKK as a terror group.
However, Washington relies heavily on the Syrian Democratic Union Party, or PYD, and its military wing, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in the battle against the IS group and has rejected Turkish pressure.
An Arab-Kurdish alliance dominated by the YPG has made significant advances against IS and other insurgents near the Turkish border in the past week.
On Wednesday, the US-backed group known as the Syria Democratic Forces launched an offensive to try to reach Shaddadeh, a major IS group stronghold in Syria’s northeastern Hassakeh province bordering Iraq.
Turkish artillery has been shelling PYD and YPG positions along its border in Syria, apparently concerned by a series of recent gains by the militias in the area.
Any Turkish escalation against the PYD is likely to further strain ties with the US.
“It has been determined with certainty that this attack was carried out by members of the separatist terror organisation together with a member of the YPG who infiltrated from Syria”, Davutoglu said, naming the bomber as Syrian national Salih Neccar, born in 1992.
Mr Neccar, whose name sounds Kurdish, was born in the mostly Kurdish Syrian town of Amouda, near the Turkish border, according to Davutoglu.
At least 14 people were held since Wednesday over the attacks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, adding that the numbers of suspects detained was likely to increase.
The leader of the main Syrian Kurdish group, Salih Muslim, denied his group was behind the Ankara attack.
Turkey blames Syrian Kurdish fighters for #Ankara attack https://t.co/6jWtNwnvih pic.twitter.com/tfv9l9qpcz
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) February 18, 2016
