AFP, Istanbul

Turkey will not allow extremists to drag Syria back into chaos and instability, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday after a suicide attack killed 22 at a Damascus church.

“We will never allow our neighbour and brother Syria... be dragged into a new environment of instability through proxy terrorist organisations,” he said, vowing to support the new government’s fight against such groups.

He did not explain what he meant by “proxy” groups but vowed that Turkey would “continue to support the Syrian government’s fight against terrorism”. The Damascus government blamed Sunday night’s shooting and suicide attack -- the first of its kind in the Syrian capital since the fall of strongman Bashar al-Assad six months ago -- on Islamic State (IS) group militants.

It cast the attack as a bid to “undermine national coexistence and to destabilise the country”, which only began emerging from the post-civil war chaos after Assad’s ouster six months ago.