Tuesday’s attack is the latest in a string of terrorist activity in Turkey.
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– August 19, 2015: Leftist militants belonging to the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, toss a grenade at a guard post at Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace, now a museum and a major tourist destination.
“I’ve never heard such a loud explosion in my life”, shop owner Sener Ozdemir, 45, told Anadolu Agency of the blast near Sultanahmet Square.
A tour company official told Reuters a group from Germany was in the area at the time but said there was no immediate information on whether any of them had been injured.
At least one witness reported that a suicide bomber was responsible for the explosion, but the official cause of the explosion has not been announced.
“This incident showed one more time that we should be united against terror”, Erdogan said. Then I felt a burnt smell.
Sajjan Gohel, worldwide security director at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, doesn’t think it’s a coincidence this suicide blast happened in a square that’s both a draw for tourists and significant to Turkey’s history and its diverse cultural identity – the type of place, he said, “that ISIS is so deeply opposed to”.
“Until we wipe out Daesh, Turkey will continue its fight at home and with coalition forces”, he said in comments broadcast live on television, using an Arabic name for Islamic State.
At least eight people were killed after an explosion rocked a central Istanbul square on Tuesday, and several others were wounded, Turkey’s Haberturk television said. It is unclear whether the death toll includes the bomber.
Previously, the Turkish National Intelligence Organization warned of the possibility of other terrorist attacks in the country.
Merkel, speaking at a news conference in Berlin, decried the attack.
The travel advisory said Danes should “until further notice” avoid public places and other places where a lot of people are gathered.
Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said the bomber was thought to have recently entered the country from Syria and was not on Turkey’s watch list of suspected militants.
Kurtulmus said most of the 10 people who died in the blast are foreigners.
A large number of fire-fighting trucks medical teams and bomb disposal teams were dispatched to the area and a police helicopter was seen circling overhead at the site.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has convened an emergency security meeting of key ministers and officials.
At least 10 people are dead and 15 are wounded in an explosion in Istanbul.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned “the terror incident that occurred in Istanbul, at the Sultanahmet Square, and which has been assessed as being an attack by a Syria-rooted suicide bomber”.
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Mr Erdogan said in televised remarks that Turks and foreigners were among the dead in the explosion in the Sultanahmet district. He did not provide details. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry told Norway’s news agency NTB that the Norwegian tourist was slightly injured and was being treated in a local hospital. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry confirmed one citizen sustained “minor injuries”.
