Syria’s information minister Monday blamed Turkey’s own government for deadly car bombings over the weekend near the Syrian border, Russian state-run television company RT reported.
“All responsibility for what has happened lies with the Turkish government and [Prime Minster Recip Tayyip] Erdogan personally,” RT quoted Omran Zubi as saying in an interview with its Arabic-language channel, according to Reuters.
Mr. Zubi also branded Mr. Erdogan a “murderer.”
“I demand his resignation as a murderer and an executioner. He has no right to build a political career on the blood of the Turkish and Syrian people,” RT quoted Mr. Zubi as saying.
Turkish officials, including Mr. Erdogan himself, have said the bombings, which killed 46 people on Saturday in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, were carried out by a long-dormant Marxist terror group with links to Syrian intelligence.
On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan said “whoever targets Turkey will sooner or later pay the price.”
On Syrian state TV the same day, Mr. Zubi said Damascus was not behind the Reyhanli blasts and blamed Turkey for the bloodshed in Syria, saying it had aided al Qaeda-led rebels.
The car bombs fed fears that Syria’s civil war, in which Syrian activists say more than 80,000 people have been killed since it began with a government crackdown on protests in March 2011, is spilling over into neighboring states.
• Shaun Waterman can be reached at swaterman@washingtontimes.com.
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