Five arrested over Syria border gate attack

ADANA - Anatolia News Agency

DHA Photo

Five suspects have been arrested over a series of charges related to last month's deadly bombing at the Cilvegözü border gate with Turkey, which killed 14 people.
The suspects were charged by court with disrupting national unity, possessing explosives, plotting to kill, and killing people. 

Eight people have been detained so far over alleged links to the bombing, but three have subsequently been released. Four of the five remaining are Syrian nationals and one is a Turkish citizen.

Turkish authorities previously blamed Damascus for the attack, with Interior Minister Muammer Güler telling reporters of information possibly linking the attack with Syrian intelligence authorities.

“We [have solid information about] their links with Syrian intelligence and the army, but this will become more clear during the judicial process,” he had said.

The Feb. 11 car bomb attack at the Cilvegözü border gate in the southern province of Hatay killed 14 people. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but a Syrian opposition faction accused the Syrian government of the bombing, saying it narrowly missed leaders of the group.

Turkey has become one of President Bashar al-Assad’s fiercest critics since unrest broke out in Syria almost two years ago. It currently hosts nearly 180,000 Syrian refugees and violence has occasionally spilled over the border. Five Turkish civilians were killed in October when a mortar bomb hit a house in the Turkish border town of Akçakale in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa.