An official says several people have been wounded in an explosion at a wedding hall in southern Turkey.
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The governor of Gaziantep, Ali Yerlikaya, called the explosion a “terror attack”, according to state-run Andolu Agency.
Simsek, interviewed on NTV television, said, “This was a barbaric attack”.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement early Sunday saying that IS was “the most likely perpetrator of the Gaziantep attack”. It said the number of wounded remained at 94. No group has claimed responsibility for the blast so far. The PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party, has also been targeting police and military facilities in Turkey. The attack comes as the country is still reeling from last month’s failed coup attempt which the government has blamed on US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.
Erdogan said there was “absolutely no difference” between IS, Kurdish rebels and Gulen’s movement, calling them terrorist groups.
Three suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul’s main airport in June.
“We wish God’s mercy for those who have lost their lives in this cruel attack, and for the injured, a quick recovery”, the Gaziantep provincial governor’s office said in a statement, confirming the death toll.
Suicide bombers also killed at least 95 people in October a year ago when they attacked a rally of pro-Kurdish and labour activists outside Ankara’s main train station.
Turkey’s restive southeast has been hit by a wave of violence since the collapse of a 2-1/2-year ceasefire with the PKK in July last year.
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Mahmut Togrul, a member of parliament for Gaziantep from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, told Reuters it was a Kurdish wedding. The war has risked destabilizing Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally that’s experienced a wave of terror attacks this year and whose government resisted an attempted military coup in July. Hundreds of residents gathered near the site chanting “Allah is great” as well as slogans denouncing attacks.
