Ankara bombings: Islamic State is main suspect, says Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu

Davutoglu also reportedly said authorities are close to identifying one of the bombers.

Speaking on Turkish broadcaster NTV in a live interview, Mr Davutoglu said Saturday’s attack was an attempt to influence the outcome of a parliamentary election on 1 November.

DNA tests are being conducted to compare samples from the suspected bombers with family members of 20 Turkish extremists linked to IS.

South Korea has offered condolences to Turkey after 128 people were killed in deadly bombings during a peace rally in the Turkish capital of Ankara on Saturday.

At least 97 people were killed by the blasts, although the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) puts the number at 128.

Turkey’s government rejected the declaration, saying the rebels must lay down arms for good and leave the country.

“We are close to identify one of the suicide bombers and this will help us to pinpoint which group carried out the attack”, Mr. Davutoglu said, also mentioning his suspicion towards IS, the PKK, and far-left groups that were all capable of such attack in his opinion.

It would have been a brutally cynical act for the PKK to attack a peace rally attended by Kurds.

The nation began three days of mourning yesterday for the victims of two blasts at a peace rally in Ankara.

Opponents of Erdogan, who has led the country for 13 years, blame him for the attack, accusing the state at best of intelligence failings and at worst of complicity by stirring up nationalist, anti-Kurdish sentiment.

On Sunday, police detained four more suspected Islamic State militants in a raid in the southern city of Adana, the regional governor’s office said Monday. At least 86 people were killed and almost 190 wounded in what appeared to be suicide attacks, Turkish officials said.

Though Turkey is a supporter of the rebels in Syria against the President Bashar al-Assad’s government, ISIS has moved on to expand its territory to Turkey as the recent attacks has made clear. Since the collapse of a ceasefire in July, more than 2,000 PKK fighters and 150 Turkish security personnel have been killed in renewed hostilities, Anadolu reported.

An HDP rally in the city of Diyarbakir was bombed in June, ahead of general elections in which the party entered parliament for the first time.

Two of Turkey’s main labor unions began a two-day strike on Monday to protest the government’s failure to prevent the bombings.