Eleven persons killed in a powerful bomb blast in Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish-majority city in southeast Turkey on Tuesday. The death toll rises after four people succumbed to their injuries in a hospital overnight.
Police have raided houses in Diyarbakir after the blast that killed 11 people - many of them children - and wounded at least a dozen more.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the blast, according to the press office of the city's governor.
Several houses were raided Wednesday and police blew up as many as 10 suspect bags in controlled explosions, Reuters reported. No devices were found in the bags.
Police also set up checkpoints on roads leading out of town, Reuters said.
Turkish authorities said blast, which occurred around 9 pm (2330 hrs IST), was caused by a bomb made from powerful explosives and was set off by a cell phone timer, The Associated Press reported.
At least five of the dead were children, police said.
A Kurdish news agency reported that the blast took place near an elementary school. Witnesses said the blast threw body parts over a wide area and left pools of blood from the killed and injured.
A hospital made an appeal for blood donations after the injured were brought in to be treated, Reuters reported.
"Our sadness is great for the victims -- many of them just children -- of the terror attack in Diyarbakir," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday. "The information is not yet complete, but it is slowly getting clearer."
Diyarbakir, a city of more than a half million people on the Tigris River, is Turkey's largest majority-Kurd city.
The region is also home to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 22-year war against Turkey in which more than 37,000 people have died, mainly Kurds. Turkey and the United States consider the PKK a terrorist group.
Kurdish rebels, who seek autonomy from the Turkish government, were blamed for a bombing that killed two people in the southeastern city of Catak on September 3.
The PKK claimed responsibility earlier this month for a series of bombings in Turkish tourist resorts and in Istanbul. Three people were killed in those attacks and dozens wounded.
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