Probe opened into public servants’ negligence in Reyhanlı bombings

HATAY – Anatolia News Agency

Turkish flags wave in front of the bomb-hit Reyhanlı Municipality building. AA Photo

An investigation has been launched by the Hatay Public Prosecutor’s Office into “public servants who committed negligence before and after the Reyhanlı attacks” on May 11, which killed 52 people.

Six new suspects in the Reyhanlı bombings case were also taken to the Adana courthouse on May 20, Interior Minister Muammer Güler said, adding that three or four of them were “prime suspects.”

Güler said seven suspects had been arrested out of 12 detainees in the first operation against the suspected perpetrators. “Then another group of men was detained since we determined that they were absolutely prime perpetrators of the incident. These are six people, and three or four of them were prime perpetrators,” Güler said.

One of the detainees was reportedly released and the others were arrested and sent to court.

Meanwhile Reyhanlı district Gov. Yusuf Güler said some 3,824,806 Turkish Liras had been donated to some 1,338 people whose houses and cars were damaged in Reyhanlı.

Hatay’s district mayors yesterday paid a visit to Reyhanlı, where they condemned the attacks that killed 52 people on May 11.

Hatay is an ancient city that hosts different sects, ethnicities and three monotheistic religions, has lived in peace for centuries and it will stay as it is, said Antakya Mayor Lütfü Savaş in the name of the group.

On May 11 twin car bomb attacks killed 52 civilians, five of them Syrian national refugees, in an attack in the town of Reyhanlı near the border with Syria.