Eight suspects were arrested over the shooting in the village of Bilge in the southeastern Mardin province, Interior Minister Besir Atalay said, adding that it was a blood feud between rival families.

The massacre sent shockwaves across the country and raised questions over a government policy of arming local villagers to support the military against Kurdish rebels waging a separatist campaign in the region.

Four masked men entered the village square from different directions late Monday, just after a Muslim preacher had completed the wedding ceremony, and opened fire on the crowd, witnesses told AFP.

The assailants then stormed several houses, continuing to shoot, they said.

The bride, the groom, his parents and four-year-old sister as well as the village's imam were all killed in the attack, authorities and witnesses said.

A 19-year-old woman who survived the massacre said the attackers herded women and children into a room in one house and sprayed them with bullets, local official, relaying her account, said.

The assailants escaped in the dark as a sandstorm cut visibility in the area, several dozen kilometers (miles) from the Syrian border.

"It is the bloodiest incident related to a blood feud that I know of," said Mazhar Bagli, an academic in nearby Diyarbakir, who has researched on the issue.

Sait Sanli, a leading activist acting as a mediator in settling blood feuds in the region, also said it was the heaviest death toll he knew of.

Blood feuds are frequent in Turkey's Kurdish-populated regions, where medieval traditions persist, illiteracy is high and many see the gun as a legitimate tool to settle scores.

Hostilities are triggered by land disputes, unpaid debts, abductions or girls eloping with someone from a rival clan.

The eight suspects all hailed from Bilge and were relatives to some of the victims, Atalay said.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said six children, 17 women and 21 men were among the dead. Three other villagers were wounded, he added.

"Pointing guns at children, slaying defenceless and innocent people is inhumane... it's beyond words," Erdogan said.

President Abdullah Gul condemned the shooting as "primitivity... and cruelty that is impossible to explain".

Villagers from Bilge on Tuesday suggested different possible motives for the massacre.

Cemil Gur told AFP that there was an argument between the two sides over lands put up for the establishment of trout farms.

"There had been strife for the past two years over the rent to be obtained from the farms... We never thought it would get to this stage," he said.

Anatolia quoted anonymous locals as saying the attackers had a feud going back some 20 years with the groom's family and had objected to the marriage.

"The attackers wanted the girl to marry one of their own relatives. We learned that there was an argument recently between the family of the assailants and that of the bride," one villager said.

Kurdish politicians however blamed the massacre on the "village guard" system, under which some 58,000 Kurds had been armed by the government to help combat the Kurdistan Workers' Party, waging a deadly separatist campaign in the region since 1984.

Many of the men in Bilge were members of the village guard, and locals said Tuesday the gunmen behind the massacre also belonged to the militia.

Critics have long called for the abolition of the system, arguing that easy access to weapons has stoked the crime rate in the already restive region.

Official statistics show that hundreds of village guards have been linked to serious crimes such as murder, kidnapping, drug-trafficking and rape.

Army troops sealed off Bilge immediately after the attack, scoured the area for explosives and kept the media outside the village.

Earth-moving machines were brought in to dig graves for the victims as survivors wailed and wept in grief.