Masked assailants attacked a wedding ceremony in southeastern Turkey with automatic weapons, killing 44 people, including the bride and groom, and wounding six others. Two girls survived after the bodies of slain friends fell on top of them.
Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay said yesterday security forces had detained eight suspected gunmen following the attack in the village of Bilge, near the city of Mardin, the previous evening.
The attack appeared to be the result of a blood feud and not a terrorist attack, Atalay said. Blood feuds are common among families in the region where tribal ties and rivalries sometimes eclipse the power of the state.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Private NTV television, citing Deputy Governor Ferhat Ozen, said the motive for the attack could be a feud between rival groups of pro-government village guards who fight alongside Turkish troops against Kurdish rebels in the region. If that is the case, the government would come under renewed pressure to rein in the militiamen, some of whom have been linked to crimes such as drug smuggling.
Atalay had earlier said the attack had left 45 dead, but later corrected the toll to 44 dead. He said the dead included six children.
Mardin Mayor Mehmet Besir Ayanoglu told Channel 24 that he spoke to two girls who said at least two masked men stormed a house where the wedding took place.
“They raided the house, we were in two rooms, they opened fire on everyone, they were wearing masks,”’ Ayanoglu quoted the girls as saying.
The girls said they lay underneath the bodies of friends until the attack was over.
The attack occurred during the wedding of the daughter of Cemil Celebi, a former village official who was among the wounded. The bride, Sevgi Celebi, the groom, Habib Ari, his mother and sister were all killed, as was the Islamic cleric who was presiding over the marriage. The Anatolia news agency said the attack lasted for 15 minutes.
Ahmet Can, a relative who took the body of his nephew to a hospital, said the site of the attack was horrifying.
“You could not believe your eyes, it is unbelievable,” he told Turkey’s Channel 24.
Earlier reports said the assailants hurled hand grenades but local official Aytac Akgul said they had attacked with automatic weapons only.
The attack killed an entire family, including the parents and their six children, aged between three and 12.
A 19-year-old survivor said the assailants ordered people to huddle in one room and opened fire, NTV said. Another report said the attack occurred when people were praying at the house.
Ambulances took at least 17 bodies to the morgue of a hospital in Mardin, said Aytac Akgul, a local official. Hundreds of relatives of the victims gathered there, wailing in distress. Several people offered to donate blood.
State TV said soldiers surrounded the village and cut all roads leading to it. It said there was no power in the village and it could not be reached by telephone. Journalists were barred from traveling to Bilge.
For years, Turkey has struggled over how to trim the 70,000-strong village guard force without releasing masses of trained fighters onto the streets of the southeast, where unemployment in some areas reaches 50 percent.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS