22 killed, 94 hurt in wedding blast in Turkey

Dogan news agency said the suicide bomber had mixed in with the guests before detonating the charge. Suddenly, a larger explosion knocked the sister to the ground.

“We are one, a whole as a nation and we will all stand up against terror. We think he may have been trapped in the panic, since he was a skinny boy”.

Other children were among the dead.

Emine Ayhan told Turkish television the bombing seriously injured her husband and killed four of her five children.

She says “once again innocent men, women and children are the victims of cowardly and perfidious violence; I condemn this attack in the strongest terms”.

The bride and groom were initially admitted to the hospital with minor injuries and later released, before being re-admitted to the facility on Sunday.

A Saturday suicide attack against a wedding party in the southern Turkish city of Gazientep has seen its death toll continue to rise overnight.

Erdogan said the aim of such attacks was to sow division between different groups in Turkey including Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen and to “spread incitement along ethnic and religious lines”.

“Daesh is trying to position and organize itself in Gaziantep”, he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Security forces are searching for two individuals who entered the celebration with the suspected bomber and then fled.

By late Sunday afternoon, at least 43 of the victims had been buried, following Islamic tradition.

At least 69 people were wounded and being treated in hospital, of who 17 were in critical condition, Erdogan said.

The bride and groom survived the attack, though the groom was wounded, a local official said.

Saturday’s blast would mark the first suspected Islamic State attack in Turkey since the airport attack.

The prosecutor’s office said a destroyed suicide vest had been discovered at the scene.

The attack is the deadliest in a series of bombings in Turkey this year.

“This may very well be a revenge attack for that”, Finkel said.

IS suicide bombers have carried out several attacks in Istanbul this year, while Kurdish militants have hit targets in both Ankara and Istanbul.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the Gaziantep blast.

A lawmaker from President Recep Erdogan’s Ruling Justice and Development Party for Gaziantep had hoped to attend the funerals but pulled out when the extent of the anger became clear. As far as the Gulen movement, it remains unclear just how big a threat it actually poses to Turkey, or what its involvement was in the recent coup, which Gulen himself has repeatedly denied participating in.

“Those, who can not overcome Turkey and try to provoke people by abusing ethnic and sectarian sensitiveness will not prevail”, Anadolu quoted him as saying.

Vice President Joe Biden will visit Ankara on Wednesday “to reaffirm our commitment to work together with Turkey, our valued NATO Ally and partner, to confront the scourge of terrorism”, according to the statement.

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 authorities blame the failed putsch on US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers.