ISIL behind Oct 10 Ankara Massacre, says prosecutor's office

An Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) sleeper cell based in the southeastern province of Gaziantep was behind the twin suicide bombings that killed 100 peace activists in Ankara on Oct. 10, the Ankara Prosecutor's Office said in a written statement.

"It is understood that a terrorist organization in [the southeastern] Gaziantep province planned attacks inside Turkey after taking direct orders from Daesh in Syria," the prosecutor's office said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL.

"The cell received permission from the terrorist group in Syria to attack all PKK [outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party] and anti-Daesh targets inside Turkey," the office said.

The postponement of the Nov. 1 snap elections was one of motives behind the attack, it said.

The attack aimed to have "the Nov. 1 general elections postponed by having terrorist activities extended," the prosecutor's office said in a written statement.

"Disrupting political stability by sabotaging the upcoming elections and complicating the formation of a government ? that would emerge after the elections" were some of the other hypothesized reasons for the massacre, it said, adding that it arrived at these conclusions from "data found on digital material."

The Kurdish problem-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) was among the organizers of the peace rally in Ankara and, according to the prosecutor's office, previous attacks against the party were also probably committed by ISIL.

"According to recordings that have been investigated, there is strong evidence that the said terrorist organization committed the attacks against the HDP in Adana and Mersin, the bomb attack at the HDP rally in Diyarbak?r and the bomb attack in Suruç," said the statement....