ISTANBUL (Dispatches) — The wedding had ended and the guests had started walking home when a bombing tore through the site of the ceremony in southeastern Turkey late Saturday, killing more than 50 people and wounding scores more, the latest in a string of attacks in the restive region in the past week.
The deadly attack in Gaziantep was carried out by a terrorist between the ages of 12 and 14, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul on Sunday, citing police sources. He said 51 people had been killed in the attack and 69 people were receiving treatment in the hospital, with 17 people in critical condition.
Erdogan also issued a statement earlier saying that Daesh was probably behind the attack and that its aim was to sow divisions among ethnic groups in the country and to "spread incitement along ethnic and religious lines.”
There was no claim of responsibility immediately after the attack.
More than 200 people had packed onto a narrow street in the district of Sahinbey, close to the Syrian border, for the Kurdish wedding when the explosion occurred around 11 p.m., witnesses said.
"We had just walked past the wedding and offered our good wishes when we heard the blast,” said Ibrahim Ates, who lives in the area. "Suddenly people started running past us. 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.”
Mahmut Togrul, a lawmaker with the Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party who visited the scene of the attack on Sunday, said the wedding had been a traditional Kurdish ceremony and had taken place in a predominantly Kurdish neighborhood.
"Besna and Nurettin Akdogan, the bride and groom, survived the attack and are in stable condition,” Togrul said. "Many of the victims that died were children,” he added.
The attack came nearly two months after militants suspected of being affiliated with Daesh stormed Istanbul’s main airport with guns and bombs, killing at least 44 people.
Turkey has been rocked by a wave of urban terrorist attacks in the past year as it confronts multiple threats, including Daesh, which recently lost ground in northern Syria, and Kurdish insurgents, who have resumed a war with the Turkish state in the southeast and were blamed by the authorities for four bombings in the past week.
Turkey is also reeling from a failed coup last month that aimed to topple the government of President Erdogan and that left at least 240 people dead. Erdogan said on Saturday that there was no difference among the various terrorist organizations attacking the country.
Televised footage showed scenes of chaos in the aftermath of the blast at the wedding. Crowds gathered, shouting "God is the greatest” as forensic teams arrived at the site. Ambulances were seen rushing to the street and leaving with bodies covered in white sheets. On Sunday, police found parts of a suicide vest in the area where the blast took place, the Gaziantep chief prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
"Everyone here is devastated,” said Hilmi Karaca, a Kurdish activist who witnessed the explosion. "We can’t even carry out the funerals because the bodies are in pieces. They are struggling to identify the victims.”
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim condemned the attack and vowed to continue to fight terrorist groups. "No matter what this treacherous terror organization is called, we as the people, the state and the government will pursue our determined struggle against it,” he said.
Earlier on Saturday, Yildirim told reporters that Turkey would take a more active role in addressing the conflict in Syria over the next six months and was willing to accept a role for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a transitional period. But he insisted that Assad would have no place in Syria’s future.
"In this area, we live in a ring of fire,” said Karaca, the activist. "We live in a place where mothers are weeping for their dead children just hours after crying tears of joy at a wedding.”