Top UN official slams deadly bomb attack in Turkish capital

Davutoglu said the bomber was a Syrian national who according to press reports slipped into Turkey along with refugees from Syria’s civil war.

At least 14 people were arrested since Wednesday in connection with the attacks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, adding that the numbers of suspects detained was likely to increase.

Six soldiers were killed and another was wounded Thursday in a roadside bombing that hit an armored military vehicle in the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir, Turkey’s semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported, citing a statement from the Turkish General Staff.

Turkey had blamed a U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish militia group for the attack, saying they had acted in collaboration with the PKK.

Government spokesman Omer Celik said the blast was a terror attack, without providing further details.

Erdogan told reporters Friday he would soon express his concerns about the Syrian Kurdish groups alleged role in the Ankara attack to President Obama.

Turkey had significantly escalated its fight against Kurdish groups prior to the bombing, with Turkish T-155 Firtina self-propelled howitzers (SPHs) shelling YPG targets in Syria close to the Turkish border from 13 February.

July 20, 2015: In the predominantly Kurdish town of Suruc, near the Syrian/Turkish border, at least 32 people were killed in a suicide bombingblamed on militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Both Erdogan and Davutoglu have called on the United States to cut ties with the insurgents.

The Turkish government has said the Ankara attack, in which a auto laden with explosives was detonated next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights, was carried out by a YPG member from northern Syria working with Kurdish militants inside Turkey.

Mr Erdogan said Turkish authorities were certain that the YPG and its political arm, the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, were behind the bombing and said Turkey was saddened by its Western allies’ failure to brand them as terrorist groups.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has said it strongly backs alliance-member Turkey following a terrorist attack in Ankara on Wednesday.

“The YPG is a pawn of the Syrian regime and the regime is directly responsible for the Ankara attack”. Turkey views the YPG as a terror group because of its affiliation with the PKK. The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to reveal military secrets, said a mixed coalition of rebel fighters were permitted to pass into Turkey and enter Syria again in order to prevent the city of Azzaz from falling into SDF hands.

The Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, has been engaged in a three-decade long insurgency against the Turkish state.