Ten killed, fifteen injured in Istanbul Tourist District blast

ISTANBUL, January 12: A Syrian suicide bomber is thought to have been responsible for an explosion in the heart of Istanbul´s historic tourist district on Tuesday which killed 10 people including Turks and foreigners, President Tayyip Erdogan said.
“I condemn the terror incident in Istanbul assessed to be an attack by a suicide bomber with Syrian origin. Unfortunately we have 10 dead including foreigners and Turkish nationals… There are also 15 wounded,” Erdogan told a lunch for Turkish ambassadors in Ankara, in a speech broadcast live on television.
The attack at the heart of one of the world’s most visited cities comes as NATO member Turkey plays a role in the US-led coalition against Islamic State (Daesh) in Syria and Iraq, and as it battles Kurdish militants in its southeast.
Several bodies lay on the ground in the Sultanahmet square, close to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, a major tourist area of Turkey’s most populous city. A police officer and witness at the scene reported also seeing several bodies and body parts.
Earlier, the Istanbul governor’s office said the authorities were investigating the type of explosive used and who might have been responsible for the attack. It said ten people were killed and 15 wounded but gave no further details.
The Norway foreign ministry confirmed that one Norwegian man was injured the explosion and was receiving treatment at a hospital. An official from a tour company who declined to be identified told Reuters that a tourist group from Germany was in the area at the time of the blast, but it was unclear whether any of them were among those hurt.
“The explosion was very loud. We shook a lot. We ran out and saw body parts,” one woman who works at a nearby antiques store told Reuters, declining to give her name. Turkey’s AHaber television said the blast may have been caused by a suicide bomber but this was not independently confirmed.
Ambulances rushed to the scene, ferrying away the wounded as police cordoned off streets. “We’re taking precautions against a second explosion,” the police officer said, ushering people out of the square.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held an emergency meeting in Ankara with the interior minister and security chiefs. Davutoglu’s office imposed a broadcasting ban on the blast, invoking a law which allows for such steps when there is the potential for serious harm to national security or public order.
The blast comes just over a year after a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a police station for tourists off the same square, killing one officer and wounding another. That attack was initially claimed by a far-left group, but later turned out to have been perpetrated by a woman with suspected extremist militant links, officials said.
Kurdish, leftist and extremist militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past. Turkey has also become a target for Islamic State (Daesh), with two bombings last year blamed on the radical militant group, in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border and in the capital Ankara, the latter killing more than 100 people. -DNA