JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia has strongly condemned Saturday’s cowardly terrorist bombing in Ankara which killed 86 people.
An official source at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reiterated Saudi Arabia’s solidarity with Turkey in the fight against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and whatever its source.
The source offered the condolences of the government and the people of Saudi Arabia to the families of the victims and to the Turkish government. It also wished the injured a speedy recovery.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced the “heinous attack,” saying it was aimed at “our unity and our country’s peace.”
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said there were “strong signs” that the attack had been carried out by two suicide bombers.
Sixty-two people died at the scene of the blasts and 24 more then succumbed to their wounds in hospital, Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu said in Ankara. He said another 186 people had been injured in the attack, 28 of them seriously.
The attack, near Ankara’s main train station, ratcheted up tensions ahead of Turkey’s November 1 snap elections.
Davutoglu said no group had claimed responsibility for the bombings. But he said groups Daesh, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) were capable of carrying out such an attack.
French President Francois Hollande condemned the “odious terrorist attack” while Russian President Vladimir Putin passed his condolences to Erdogan.
National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said “the fact that this attack occurred ahead of a planned rally for peace underscores the depravity of those behind it.”
Bodies of the slain activists were seen strewn across the ground after the blasts, with the banners they had been holding for the “Work, Peace and Democracy” rally lying next to them.
With the country shattered by the deadliest attack in the history of modern Turkey, Davutoglu declared three days of national mourning.
There were scenes of chaos after the blasts, as ambulances raced to get to the wounded and police cordoned off the area around the train station.
The blast was the deadliest in the history of the modern Turkish Republic, surpassing the May 2013 twin bombings in Reyhanli on the Syrian border that killed over 50 people.
