The Turkish wedding bomber may have been just 13 years old
The suicide bomber who killed at least 50 people at a wedding in Turkey Saturday night is believed to have been 12 to 14 years old, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday afternoon in a national address from Istanbul.
On top of the death toll, 69 people remain wounded from the teenager's suicide bomb and 17 of those are in life-threatening condition.
"We stand by our ally Turkey and pledge to continue to work closely together to defeat the common threat of terrorism," said the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, John Bass, on Sunday. Pope Francis led a public prayer for the victims and for peace Sunday at noon, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sent her support and sympathy to Erdogan in a telegram.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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