At least 30 people have been killed and 94 more wounded in an explosion at a wedding ceremony in Turkey's southeastern province of Gaziantep, near the Syria border.
The blast, which occurred at around 11pm local time on Saturday in the Akdere neighbourhood of Sahin Bey district at a Kurdish family wedding, was a "terror attack", according to Ali Yerlikaya, the governor of Gaziantep. He said ambulances were dispatched to the scene, and dead and wounded people were taken to hospitals. Mehmet Simsek, Turkey's deputy prime minister, told broadcaster NTV that the explosion appeared to have been caused by a suicide bomber. Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) group are believed to be behind the attack, Samil Tayyar, an MP with the governing Justice and Development Party, said on Twitter. Southeastern Turkey has been hit by several deadly blasts over the past year, linked either to ISIL [also known as ISIS] or the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), an armed group outlawed in Turkey.
Three suspected ISIL suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul's main airport, Ataturk, in July, the deadliest in a string of attacks in Turkey this year. Almost 40 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Ankara in March that was claimed by a Kurdish separatist group.
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