The man was not suspected of being among the gunmen, but was allegedly found to be in possession of hand grenades and other ammunition as part of the investigation into the massacre, Atalay said, according to Anatolia news agency.

Masked gunmen stormed into Bilge, a small Kurdish village near the Syrian border, on Monday evening and opened fire just after a Muslim preacher had completed the wedding ceremony, witnesses said.

The carnage, which sent shockwaves across Turkey, is believed to have been motivated by long-running hostilities between rival families.

Settling disputes through violence, including long-running blood feuds, are frequent in Turkey's Kurdish-populated regions, where feudal traditions persist and illiteracy is high.

The suspects all hailed from Bilge and were related to the victims, who included six children and 16 women, three of them pregnant.

Forty-eight children lost at least one parent in the attack, including 31 who lost both, social services official Fevzi Hamidi told Anatolia Saturday, adding that many families had applied to adopt the orphans.

"But the relatives do not wish to give the children up for adoption and the children want to stay with their relatives," he said, stressing that psychologists would continue the rehabilitation work in Bilge.

In a major embarrassment for Ankara, the suspected gunmen included members of the "village guard" -- a Kurdish militia recruited by the government to help in the fight against separatist Kurdish rebels in the southeast -- and used government-supplied weapons in the carnage.

The bloodbath in Bilge stoked calls for disbanding the militia, whose members have often been implicated in serious crimes such as murder, rape and drug smuggling, even though they have proved useful helpers of the army against the rebels.

Atalay Saturday ruled out the dissolution of the force, but added that the government was reconsidering its status.

"Village guards were involved in this incident.. but the village guard system is not the direct cause," Atalay said.

"The village guard system may have dimensions that need to be criticised, debated and revised. And those are already being reviewed," he added.