Bombing kills 30 at outdoor wedding
A bomb attack targeting an outdoor wedding party in southeastern Turkey killed at least 30 people and wounded 94 others, authorities said yesterday.
Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said the ‘‘barbaric’’ attack in the city of Gaziantep, near the border with Syria, on Saturday appeared to be a suicide bombing. Other officials said it could have been the carried out by either Kurdish militants or Islamic State group extremists.
Photos taken after the explosion showed several bodies covered with white sheets as a crowd gathered nearby.
The Gaziantep governor’s office yesterday raised the death toll from 22 to 30. It said the number of wounded remained at 94.
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 Islamic State.
In June, suspected IS militants attacked Istanbul’s main airport with guns and bombs, killing 44 people.
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 and his followers.
Last week, a string of bombings blamed on the PKK that targeted police and soldiers killed at least a dozen people. A fragile peace process between the PKK and the government collapsed last year, leading to a resumption of the threedecade-long conflict.
‘‘This was a barbaric attack. It appears to be a suicide attack. All terror groups, the PKK, Daesh, the (Gulen movement) are targeting Turkey. But God willing, we will overcome,’’ Simsek said. Daesh is an Arabic name for the IS group.
Simsek later travelled to Gaziantep along with the country’s health minister to visit the wounded.
Police sealed off the site of the explosion and forensic teams moved in.