Laura Mandaro

USA TODAY Network

An explosion at a wedding ceremony hall late Saturday in Turkey's southeastern city of Gaziantep has left at least 50 people dead and 90 injured, government officials said.

On Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan put the death toll at 51 and blamed an Islamic State suicide bomber possibly as young as 12.

Suicide bomber as young as 12 behind attack at Turkey wedding that left 51 dead

The governor of Gaziantep, Ali Yerlikaya, called the explosion a "terror attack," and other officials said it could have been the work of either Islamic State or Kurdish militants. One called it a suicide bombing.

Gaziantep is about 76 miles from Aleppo, the Syrian city devastated by five years of civil war and recent Russian and Syrian-state airstrikes. The war has risked destabilizing Turkey, a NATO ally that's experienced a wave of terror attacks this year and whose government resisted an attempted military coup in July.

Turkey blamed Islamic State terrorists, also known as ISIL or Daesh, for a June attack that killed 45 at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport. There were at least five terror attacks in Turkey in the first half of the year.

The attacks have escalated as the Turkish government, which previously viewed the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad as a bigger threat, has cooperated more with the United States and the West to fight Islamic State forces.

The Turkish government has also blamed some attacks on a Kurdish separatist movement that has waged a three decade fight with the country for autonomous territory. Earlier this week, at least 14 people were killed and more than 220 wounded when two car bombs went off at police stations in eastern Turkey within 24 hours. The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was responsible for at least two of the bombings, the Anadolu news agency reported.

Kurdish forces are also fighting the Assad regime in Syria, another front in the fractured civil war, raising the possibility that Saturday's bomb was aimed at Kurds in Turkey as a spillover of the Syrian war.

Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said on NTV Television: "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."

Contributing: The Associated Press

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