ISIL Believed to Be Main Suspect in Ankara Deadly Blasts – Turkish PM

Ahmet Davutoglu told Turkish broadcaster NTV in an interview that DNA tests were being carried out to determine the identities of the suspected bombers.

“We are close to a name, which points a finger at an organization”, prime minister said.

Hundreds chanting anti-government slogans marched on a mosque in an Istanbul suburb for the funeral of several of the victims, attended by Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the pro-Kurdish parliamentary opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which says it was the target of the bombings.

Developments relating to Saturday’s deadly bombings targeting a peace rally in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

Turkey ended a 2013 cease-fire agreement with the PKK after a July suicide bombing, UPI reports.

Turkey agreed recently to more actively support the U.S.-led battle against the Islamic State group, opening its bases to USA aircraft launching air strikes on the extremist group in Syria and carrying out a limited number of strikes on the group itself.

No group has claimed any responsibility for the bombing yet.

Before the widely expected ceasefire was announced, Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan had dismissed it as a “tactic” ahead of the election, reiterating government demands that the militants lay down arms and leave Turkey.

In a statement Monday, the HDP accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Davutoglu’s government of escalating the violence to try to push the party below the 10% electoral threshold to win seats in Turkey’s parliament. The government however said there would be no postponement of November polls.

The prime minister said the country has had experience dealing with suicide bombers in the past, and that these attacks would not threaten Turkey’s stability.

Davutoglu assured his countrymen that Turkey was not slipping into the kind of anarchy that has torn neighboring Syria to shreds.

Security officials said the attack bore the hallmarks of two other recent strikes that authorities blamed on Islamic State-linked militants from Turkey. A pro-Kurdish party says up to 128 people have died.

The attack, at a peace rally, left 245 people injured, with 48 of them in a serious condition. The Kurdish militias, which emerged from the Syrian war and are known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), have routed Islamic State fighters from large tracts of territory – often with the help of US airstrikes.

The military general staff in Ankara said Turkish jets struck PKK camps in northern Iraq on Sunday, and killed more than a dozen Kurdish militants.