President Tayyip Erdogan said it was likely that Islamic State militants had carried out the late-night attack, one of the deadliest this year in Turkey, which faces threats from militants at home and across the border with neighbouring Syria.
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Bahrain News Agency (BNA), quoted a statement from the Bahraini Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying, “The ministry expresses its honest condolences to the families of the victims and wishes a speedy recovery for those injured as a result of this terrorist attack that aims to destabilise security and stability”.
He said 69 people were in hospital and 17 were “heavily injured”.
A Kurdish wedding in Turkey ended in tragedy when a suicide bomber attacked.
He repeated his assertion that initial information suggested the attack was perpetrated by the Islamic State group.
Saturday’s attack comes with Turkey still in shock just a month after Erdogan and the government survived an attempted coup by rogue military officers, which Ankara blames on USA -based Islamist preacher Fethullah Gulen.
Earlier this week, two auto bombs targeting police stations killed at least six people and wounded at least 219 others. Turkey, which allows planes from the US-led anti-ISIS coalition to operate from its air base at Incirlik, has also been in the terror group’s crosshairs.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim condemned the bombing, which he said turned “a wedding party into a place of mourning” and he vowed to prevail over the “devilish” attacks, the AP said.
Mahmut Tagrul, lawmaker with the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, said the majority “of the victims that died were children”. Orhan Akin, Gaziantep bureau chief for the Ihlas News Agency, told CNN Turk that he saw “at least 20 ambulances carrying injured people”.
Officials have found pieces of a detonated suicide vest at the scene, the agency reported.
Other officials say it could have been carried out by Kurdish rebels or the Islamic State group.
The pope called on faithful to pray for the victims while Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the “cowardly and underhand” attack “in the strongest terms”. “When we went back to see what had happened, everyone was on the floor, and there were body parts scattered everywhere and blood splattered on the walls”, a local man tells the New York Times. “We are in pain, especially the women and children”.
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The terrifying attack comes only as the latest in a string of attacks that have sent shockwaves throughout the country and the world, including an attack on Istanbul’s main airport, suspected to be the work of ISIS, that left 44 dead, and a recent failed coup attempt that left 240 dead.
