Turkey bomb: Almost 100 dead after attack in Ankara

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

He suggested the Islamic State group or Kurdish rebels could be responsible. Russian Federation has also entered the fray on behalf of the Syrian government recently, bombing sites in Syria and reportedly violating Turkish airspace a few times in the past week. In recent weeks, however, that stance has changed with the Turkish government allowing its bases to be used to target Isis terrorists in Iraq.

He told followers gathered in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican that news of the Ankara bomb attacks brought “pain for the numerous dead, pain for the wounded and pain because the attackers hit helpless people who were demonstrating for peace”. Police later cordoned off the area.

Footage screened by broadcaster CNN Turk showed a line of young men and women holding hands and dancing, and then flinching as a large explosion flashed behind them, engulfing people carrying HDP and leftist party banners. Scuffles broke out between police and family members frantically searching for loved ones or complaining about the poor police response.

Thousands of protesters chant Sunday in the capital, Ankara, saying the state and government will be held to account.

US President Barack Obama expressed his condolences in a call with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan over the loss of life from an attack in Ankara on Saturday, the White House said.

The attack seems to have been designed with an aim to plunge the country at Europe’s border into the cauldrons of war and ethno-sectarian strife that has already plagued the rest of the Middle East. The attack appears very strategic as most of the killed people were ethnic Kurds and their supporters.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was due to hold an emergency meeting with the heads of the police and intelligence agencies and other senior officials.

Davutoglu’s office named 52 of the victims overnight and said autopsies were continuing. The targeted attack is on a segment of population at odds with the Turkish government over how to treat the Kurdish rebellion in the country.

An attack in the predominantly Kurdish town of Suruc on July 20 targeting pro-HDP activists and blamed on Islamic State (IS) jihadists killed 32 people and wounded a hundred others.

Two blasts at a peace rally in the Turkish capital Ankara have reportedly killed almost 100 people.

‘We are faced with a huge massacre.

Reports said that hundreds of people in Ankara had rushed to hospital to donate blood for the victims.

With the election on November 1 approaching, the group announced that it would “make no attempts to hinder or harm the exercise of a fair and equal election”.

US ambassador John Bass said he was “appalled by the terrorist attack”.