Moscow - Syria's information minister has blamed Turkey's government for deadly car bombings near the Syrian border and branded Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan a “murderer”, state-run Russian TV company RT reported on Monday.
“All responsibility for what has happened lies with the Turkish government and Erdogan personally,” RT quoted Omran Zubi as saying in an interview with its Arabic-language channel.
“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 Zubi as saying.
It said he repeated a denial of Syrian involvement in car bombings that killed 46 people on Saturday in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli. Turkey has accused a group with links to Syrian intelligence of carrying out the attacks.
Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey “will not fall into the trap they're trying to push us into” but added: “Whoever targets Turkey will sooner or later pay the price.”
Speaking on Syrian state TV the same day, Zubi said Damascus had no hand in the Reyhanli blasts and blamed Turkey for the bloodshed in Syria, saying it had aided al-Qaeda-led rebels.
The car bombs increased fears that Syria's civil war, in which a Syrian opposition group says more than 82 000 people have been killed since it began with a government crackdown on protests in March 2011, is dragging in neighbouring states. - Reuters