UPDATED 5pm - Ninety-five people were killed in an attack by two suspected suicide bombers on a rally of pro-Kurdish and labour activists in Ankara on Saturday, with 246 people still being treated, 48 of them in intensive care, the prime minister's office said.
Bodies covered by flags and banners, including those of the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party, lay scattered on the road among bloodstains and body parts.
"Like other terror attacks, the one at the Ankara train station targets our unity, togetherness, brotherhood and future," President Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement, calling for "solidarity and determination".
Health Minister Mehmet Muezzinoglu told a news conference that 86 people had been killed and 186 wounded, 28 of whom were in intensive care. The death toll could rise further.
Witnesses said the two explosions happened seconds apart shortly after 10am as hundreds gathered for a planned march to protest over a conflict between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants in the southeast.
"I heard one big explosion first and tried to cover myself as the windows broke. Right away there was the second one," said Serdar, 37, who was working at a newspaper stand in the train station. "There was shouting and crying and I stayed under the newspapers for a while. I could smell burnt flesh."
There were no claims of responsibility for the attack.
Julian Vassallo, a Maltese political counsellor the European External Action Service in Ankara said the terrorists are trying to exploit divisions and create polarisations at a time when many are trying to do precisely the opposite.
“The fact that it was targeted against people who were trying to put an end to the cycle of violence really makes it a more heinous crime,” Dr Vassallo told timesofmalta.com.
The NATO member has been in a heightened state of alert since starting a "synchronized war on terror" in July, including air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) bases in northern Iraq. It has also rounded up hundreds of suspected Kurdish and Islamist militants at home.
KURDISH MILITANTS' CEASEFIRE
The attacks, in the scale of casualties, exceeded events in 2003, when two synagogues, the Istanbul HSBC Bank headquarters and the British consulate were hit with a total loss of 62 lives. Authorities said those attacks bore the hallmarks of al Qaeda.
Saturday's attacks came as expectation mounted that PKK militants would announce a unilateral ceasefire, effectively restoring a truce that collapsed in July. The government had already dismissed the anticipated move as an election gambit to bolster the HDP, whose success at June elections had helped erode the ruling AK party's majority.
Hours after the bombing, the PKK ordered its fighters to halt operations in Turkey unless they faced attack. It said through the Firat news website it would avoid acts that could hinder a "fair and just election" on Nov. 1.
Footage screened by broadcaster CNN Turk showed a line of young men and women holding hands and dancing, and then flinching as a large explosion flashed behind them, where people had gathered carrying HDP and leftist party banners.
An injured man hugs an injured woman after an explosion during a peace march in Ankara, Turkey."We are faced with a very big massacre, a vicious, barbarous attack," HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas told reporters.
He drew a parallel with the bombing of an HDP rally in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir on the eve of the last election in June and a suicide bombing blamed on Islamic State in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border in July, which killed 33 mostly young pro-Kurdish activists.
The Interior Minister said he could not confirm it was a suicide bombing.
An angry crowd booed and threw bottles when the health and interior ministers arrived in a convoy at the scene, and they were quickly driven away.
Some activists saw the hand of the state in all three attacks on Kurdish interests, accusing Erdogan and the AK Party of seeking to stir up nationalist sentiment, a charge Turkey's leaders have vehemently rejected.