Officials have said at least nine of the 10 dead are German, as well as numerous 15 wounded. Fiftenn other people were injured, Turkish officials said.
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A Kurdish splinter group, the Freedom Falcons of Kurdistan (TAK), claimed a mortar attack on Istanbul’s second global airport on December 23 which killed a female cleaner and damaged several planes.
Turkey’s state-run news agency said Davutoglu held a telephone conversation with German chancellor Angela Merkel to express his condolences.
A year ago a woman killed herself and a police officer when she detonated a suicide bomb in a police station a few dozen meters from Sultanahmet Square. It was unclear whether the death toll of 10 included the bomber.
Private NTV television said the explosion was close to a park that is home to a landmark obelisk.
Citing CNN Turk, Germany’s 24-hour news broadcaster n24 reported that six Germans had been wounded.
Investigators honed in on ISIS after two suicide blasts in October hit a lunchtime peace rally in Ankara, in which demonstrators were calling for an end to the renewed conflict between the PKK and Turkish government.
“This incident has once again showed that as a nation we should act as one heart, one body in the fight against terror”. The number of casualties is unclear, but some media outlets have reported the Governor’s Office of Istanbul as saying 10 are dead and 15 injured.
Speaking in Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the “terrorist” attack and said that, according to an assessment, a person with Syrian origins was the perpetrator. He did not provide details.
A government official earlier said the explosion was believed to be “terror-linked”.
The identities of those killed and hurt were were not immediately clear although unconfirmed reports said the injured included two Germans and one Norwegian tourist. A powerful blast rocked the Sultanahmet neighbourhood which is home to Istanbul’s biggest concentration of monuments and and is visited by tens of thousands of tourists every day.
Police secure the area after an explosion in central Istanbul, Turkey January 12, 2016.
Meanwhile the banned ultra-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) has also staged a string of usually small-scale attacks in Istanbul over the last months.
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Local media reports suggest there may have been several explosions.
