Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a Tuesday blast that killed 10 when it ripped through a popular tourist area in central Istanbul has “Syrian roots”, further proof Turkey is not immune to the troubles plaguing its southern neighbor.
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The Istanbul governor’s office said the authorities were investigating the type of explosive used and who might have been responsible for the attack.
“Terrorist links are suspected”, the official told AFP, on the condition of anonymity, after the explosion in the Sultanahmet district of Turkey’s biggest city.
An explosion in a historic district of Istanbul popular with tourists killed 10 people and injured 15 others Tuesday morning, the Istanbul governor’s office said.
The travel advisory said Danes should “until further notice” avoid public places and other places where a lot of people are gathered.
Turkey has been on alert since October 10 when two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of peace activists in Ankara in the bloodiest attack in the country’s modern history.
Norway’s foreign ministry said one Norweigan man was injured and was being treated in hospital.
An official at the German foreign ministry said it could not be ruled out that German citizens may have been injured and that its crisis unit and the consulate in Istanbul were urgently working with the Turkish authorities to find out.
“It was hard to say who was alive or dead”, Koroglu said.
The attack comes at a time of heightened violence between Turkey’s security forces and militants linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in the country’s mostly-Kurdish southeast. Ambulances rushed to the scene, ferrying away the wounded as police cordoned off streets, fearing a second attack.
The official did not have information on the 10th victim.
It was reported earlier by Turkish media that according to the preliminary data, the explosion might have been carried out by a suicide bomber.
“The explosion was so loud, the ground shook”.
Turkey is on edge after a series of deadly attacks blamed on the Islamic State jihadist group including a double suicide bombing in the capital Ankara in October that left 103 people dead.
“Ambulances started rushing in and I knew it was a bomb right away because the same thing happened here previous year”, said Ali Ibrahim Peltek, 40, who operates a kiosk selling snacks and drinks on the square. The prosecutor’s office said that attack was carried out by a local Islamic State cell.
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In response to the attack, on their website the Irish department of foreign affairs has strongly advised Irish travellers against “travelling to the border areas between Turkey and Syria in light of the current instability in the region, in particular the provinces of Hatay, Kilis, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa and Mardin”.
