At least 41 people have been killed in an attack on a wedding party in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, Turkish media has reported.

Turkey's NTV television, citing authorities, said that 41 people had been killed and three others wounded in the attack on Monday in the village of Bilge in Mardin province.

Ahmet Ferhat Ozen, acting governor of Mardin province, told Reuters news agency that men wearing masks stormed into a hall where wedding guests were assembled and opened fire with automatic rifles and hand grenades.

There are reports that several people have been seriously injured and that the death toll may rise.

NTV said the motive for the attack was an feud between rival groups of pro-government village guards who fight alongside Turkish troops against Kurdish fighters but this has not yet been confirmed.

Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Istanbul, said, that the use of grenades and Kalashnikovs seem to be because the people involved were village guards - local militia who in the past have been allowed to be heavily armed in order to fight the PKK, the Kurdish group there.

"This may be a situation where a local feud has resulted in these weapons being used on their own people ... it is too soon to say definitively what is going on exactly," she said.

"The areas has been sealed off and we understand that it is impossible to get anywhere near the village."