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ANKARA. — Turkish authorities scrambled yesterday to identify a child suicide bomber acting on the orders of Islamic State jihadists who killed 54 people including several children at a Kurdish wedding close to the Syrian border.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the IS group needed to be completely pushed out of the border zone inside Syria, amid Turkish media reports of an Ankara-backed offensive by rebels against the group.

The attack late Saturday on a crowded street wedding in the city of Gaziantep was the latest in a devastating series of bombings in Turkey at a time when the country is riven by internal upheaval and shaken by the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the bomber was aged “between 12 and 14” and that initial findings showed it had been “perpetrated by Daesh (IS)”.

Media said the majority of those dead were children or teenagers, with 29 of the 44 victims identified so far aged under 18. At least 22 victims were under 14, a Turkish official added. — AFP.