Istambul, Turkey – The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), a terror group linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) claimed on Thursday responsibility for the suicide car-bomb attack that stroke the Turkish capital on March 13. This last attack killed 37 people and left hundreds more injured.
The TAK posted on its website that militants struck Sunday “in the heart of the fascist Turkish republic. The group described the car bombing as “vengeful action” for security operations in the southeast that have been underway since July.
“We claim the operation of March 13, 2016, at 6:45 p.m. in the heart of the Republic of Turkey,” the statement read.
Since July last year, more than 200 people have died in five different suicide bombings in Turkey that were blamed either on the Kurdish rebels or the Islamic State group. Three of those bombings have targeted Ankara. The rebel groupTAK had previously claimed responsibility for one of those car bombing in Ankara which happened last month killing 29 people.
The TAK, warned that there would be further reprisals for any “hostile operations against the Kurdish people” or jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. It said deaths were an “inevitable consequence of war.”
Suicide bomber identified
Both The TAK Turkey’s Interior Ministry identified Seher Cagla Demir as the female suicide bomber behind the Ankara attack. Turkey’s Interior Ministry said she’s believed to have trained with Syria-based Kurdish rebels known as the YPG, the military wing of Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD), after crossing into Syria.
According to a written statement from the Turkish interior ministry, Seher Cagla Demir was born in 1992 in the eastern province of Kars.
The report also said she was in Syria by December 6, 2013, after traveling to the city of Diyarbakir in the predominantly Kurdish southeast on November 30, 2013. Her family, who still live in Balikesir where Demir attended university, reported her missing on December 5, 2013.
Source: CNN