On Saturday, a boy strapped on a suicide bomber’s vest, walked into a hall where a wedding was underway and pressed the detonate button. The blast killed at least 51 Kurds and it’s believed that one-third of those victims were but children themselves. The suicide bombing in Gaziantep, near the border with Syria, was the deadliest attack in Turkey this year. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the blast was the work of Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and the murderous bombing has been roundly condemned. The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has added its strong condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and expressed its sympathies to the families of those killed and also wishing the more-than-70 injured a speedy and full recovery.

That the bombing was the work of Daesh has yet to be confirmed. What’s known for certain is that the forces of evil are at work — and there is but no other way to describe the twisted mindset that can brainwash a boy to become a mass killer in an act of terrorism. Whether it be through coercion in some form or conviction in another — with a promise of the riches of paradise — those who persuaded the suicide bomber to commit his final horrific act are guilty of odious depravity and deception of the worst kind.

No cause is worth committing mass murder for and no cause is worth convincing the innocent to become killers. Daesh, facing defeat in the lands that it had claimed between Iraq and Syria, is now in full-blown retreat. It cannot hold the towns and cities in its so-called ‘Caliphate’ and it cannot fully control the enslaved civilian populations within its lands now.

But as it fasces defeat and collapse, Daesh is taking on the guise now of an enemy that will use any and every form of warfare to avoid its inevitable end. Just as in the final days of the Second World War, when the Nazi leadership turned to young boys to don its uniform and fight the might of the Soviet and Allied armour and armies, Daesh now desperately turns to youth, offers them the allure of a fast track to paradise and convinces them to kill in a suicide vest.

If, when Daesh is finally defeated, there is one event that sums up the necessity to destroy and obliterate it, the Gaziantep killings is that event.

Daesh cannot possible stoop any lower, can it?