“We extend heartfelt condolences to the friends and families of the victims and we wish a full and speedy recovery for the many who were wounded”, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement.
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The bomber may have come over the border from Syria but Daesh is also known to have built homegrown cells inside Turkey in Gaziantep and even Istanbul, wrote its well-connected columnist Abdulkadir Selvi.
Mr. Cavusoglu accused Austria of “supporting a terrorist organisation which is attacking Turkey”, according to Austrian paper Der Standard. Sixty-six people were still in hospital, 14 of them in a serious condition.
However Western states say Ankara has begun to move strongly against the group and seal its borders to jihadist traffic after the attacks blamed on ISIS on its soil this year.
Witnesses said the blast, the deadliest terror attack in Turkey this year, occurred in a packed street of people dancing and celebrating the marriage.
Hurriyet newspaper said the type of bomb, which contained scraps of metal, was similar to those used in previous attacks on pro-Kurdish gatherings.
On 29 June, 41 people were killed in a gun and bomb attack by Isis militants at Istanbul Ataturk Airport, while 37 victims died in a suicide vehicle bombing by Kurdish separatists in Ankara in March.
The deadly attack also came amid ongoing struggles between the government and Kurdish militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, and as the country was still reeling from the aftermath of last month’s failed coup attempt, which the government has blamed on a USA -based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, and his followers.
“Daesh should be completely cleansed from our borders and we are ready to do what it takes for that”, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavusoglu said at a news conference in the Turkish city of Ankara. The group was also accused of carrying suicide bombings at a rally of labor activists in the capital, Ankara, last October that left more than 100 people dead.
Meantime, there have also been ongoing attacks claimed by the PKK or linked to the militant group, as well as the coup attempt blamed on Gulen’s movement.
Quoting security sources, some Turkish media reported earlier the Gaziantep attack could have been retaliation by ISIS for an operation carried out by Ankara-backed opposition rebels against the jihadists in Jarablus in northern Syria.
“The pro-Kurdish Peoples” Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding was for one of its members.
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Ozcan said the group had chosen a wedding party and sent a child to carry out the attack to increase the “shock” effect of the attack.
