Mehmet Erdogan, a ruling party legislator from Gaziantep, said authorities believe it was most probably a suicide bomb attack that could have been the work of either Kurdish militants or Islamic State group extremists.
Advertisement
Southern Turkey has been hit by several deadly blasts over the past year, linked either to Kurdish separatist militants or so-called Islamic State.
Mahmut Togrul, an HDP lawmaker from Gaziantep, around 40 km (25 miles) north of the border with Syria, told Reuters it was a Kurdish wedding.
Four years ago on Aug 20, 10 people were killed and 66 others were injured in a auto bomb attack carried out by PKK terror organization in Gaziantep. The PKK militant group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Kurdish forces are also fighting the Assad regime in Syria, another front in the fractured civil war, raising the possibility that Saturday’s bomb was aimed at Kurds in Turkey as a spillover of the Syrian war. It was reportedly a Kurdish wedding.
The Dogan news agency said the explosion, which went off at 1940 GMT, had caused injuries and fatalities. Daesh has been blamed for suicide bombings on Kurdish gatherings in the past as militants try to stir ethnic tensions.
Turkey has struggled with growing numbers of terrorist attacks from myriad different groups nationwide, including not just the PKK and ISIS, but also groups like the Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front.
Ankara blames US -based preacher Fethullah Gulen for the July 15 failed putsch.
The “terror attack” in Turkish wedding in the southeastern part of the country took away 30 lives, sais governor.
People react after an explosion in Gaziantep, southeastern Turkey, early Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016.
Earlier this week, a string of bombings blamed on the PKK that targeted police and soldiers killed at least a dozen people.
As has been the case in previous attacks, Turkey’s broadcasting regulator RTUK banned broadcast of footage from the scene of the attack in Gaziantep.
The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was responsible for at least two of the bombings, the Anadolu news agency reported.
Advertisement
In a sign that Turkey’s position was becoming gradually more aligned with Russian Federation and Iran, he added that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could remain temporarily during a transition period.
