Turkish president vows to ‘destroy terrorists’
ISTANBUL — Turkey’s president vowed on Sunday to “destroy terrorists” after months of deadly attacks throughout the country and reiterated his claim that a child suicide bomber was responsible for last weekend’s explosion that claimed at least 54 lives in the southeast.
Speaking at a rally in Gaziantep where the suicide bombing took place at a Kurdish wedding, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the “terrorists” are being “picked up one by one” by Turkey’s security forces.
“They will all be cleansed out like a cancer cell,” he told a roaring crowd of his supporters. “We will find them and punish them.”
Last week, Erdogan said a 12- to 14-year-old child was the suicide bomber, but Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said later that the bomber was still unidentified and investigations continued. On Sunday, Erdogan reiterated the claim without saying whether it’s a result of the investigation.