Eight people were killed and 60 were wounded in an attack on a wedding party in southern Turkey that the deputy prime minister said appeared to have been carried out by a suicide bomber.
Ambulances raced to the scene of the attack in the Sahinbey district of the city of Gaziantep and police sealed off the area.
Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek said the attack was probably carried out by a suicide bomber.
“There are people who lost their lives and we have initial information suggesting it was a bomb attack. We don’t know numbers of injured,” said Turkish MP Mehmet Erdogan, a ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmaker.
It was not clear who was responsible for the explosion but last week, the region suffered three attacks blamed on Kurdish rebels in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
However, Mr Erdogan said it was the type of attack that could have been launched by the so-called Islamic State (IS) group or the PKK.
A Turkish official confirmed an explosion had taken place in Gaziantep but would not say how many casualties there were.
“The explosion took place during a wedding. According to initially available information, the ceremony was being held outdoors,” the official said.
NATO member Turkey has suffered a string of attacks by IS and by Kurdish militants seeking autonomy or independence.
Last month, the country was shaken by an attempted coup by rogue elements of the military.
Thousands have since been arrested or sacked in the military, police, civil service, judiciary and academia in a crackdown on what President Tayyip Erdogan calls a vast terrorist conspiracy.
In July, three suspected IS suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul’s main airport – 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 group.