Later, addressing the nation before Istanbul’s city hall, Erdogan said the attacker in Gaziantep was aged between 12 and 14.
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Turkey has been rocked by a wave of attacks in the past year that have either been claimed by Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party – known by its acronym PKK – or were blamed on IS.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends a news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin (not seen) following their meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, August 9, 2016.
In Gaziantep, the chief prosecutor’s office said they had found a destroyed suicide vest at the blast site. Blood stains and burns marked the walls of the narrow lane where the wedding party was attacked while women in white and checkered scarves cried sitting crosslegged and waiting outside the morgue for word on missing relatives.
“During the explosion, the neighbour died on top of me”. Local journalist Naziım Daştan tells the Guardian: “There were so many dead people”.
The bride and groom – Besna and Nurettin Akdogan – were rushed to hospital but were not seriously wounded.
Crowds of mourners gathered to pray and chants of Allahu Akbar (“God is greatest”) could be heard.
“This is a massacre of unprecedented cruelty and barbarism”, Simsek told reporters. He said 69 people were wounded, with 17 of them in critical condition.
At least 50 people were killed on Saturday when a suspected suicide bomber detonated his explosives among people dancing on the street at a wedding party.
However, Sisek said it was too soon to say which group was behind the explosion.
Erdogan in a statement before his television appearance said there is “no difference” between the IS, which is based in neighboring Syria, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party and Fetullah Terrorist Organization, founded by US -based cleric Fethullah Gulen, state-run Anadolu Agency reported Sunday.
A partial broadcast ban on reporting the attack was later imposed by the Turkish broadcasting authority.
USA ambassador to Turkey John Bass condemned the “barbaric attack on innocent civilians”, adding that Washington would “continue to work closely together to defeat the common threat of terrorism”.
The pope called on faithful to pray for the victims while Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the “cowardly and underhand” attack “in the strongest terms”. He later travelled to the city along with the country’s health minister for an inspection.
But as well as refugees and opposition activists, there have always been fears it was home to a significant jihadist presence.
The number of fatalities makes the bombing the deadliest attack carried out by extremists in 2015.
Security expert Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military officer and columnist for the online newspaper Al-Monitor, said that IS who view the attack as “hitting two birds with one stone” – as retaliation for Syrian Kurdish advances on their forces in Syria, and for Turkey’s attacks on IS targets.
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The blast in Gaziantep came just hours after Yildirim said Ankara would play a “more active” role in efforts to solve the Syrian civil war.
