Turkish media, including some close to the government, identified him as Nabil Fadli and said he was Saudi-born. However, he allegedly flipped loyalties to ISIS after his town, near Aleppo, was overtaken by the extremist group sometime in 2014. The suspects were not identified. Ala said the suicide bomber wasn’t on any Turkish or global watch lists for IS militants.
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Mr de Maiziere’s Turkish counterpart Efkan Ala said the suicide bomber was not on any wanted list but had registered with the immigration authorities.
This month, Turkey put in place restrictions on Syrians entering Turkey from third countries, following pressure from the European Union to slow the flow of refugees into Greece.
Fifteen people were also injured in the attack, two of whom are still in a critical condition.
In Istanbul, the plazas and cobblestone streets in the heart of one of the city’s main tourist zones were without their usual bustle Wednesday.
Turkey has been hit by a string of deadly attacks blamed on extremists over the past year, including a double suicide bombing in October in Ankara that killed more than 100 people.
Turkish media reports said on Wednesday the authorities had detained three Russian nationals as part of the crackdown on Islamic State, but it was not immediately clear whether the move was part of the investigation into the Istanbul attack, for which there has been no claim of responsibility.
Meanwhile, security forced conducted operations around the country against suspected Islamic State cells.
Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu was accompanied at the scene of the attack by senior ministers and the mayor of Istanbul, Kadir Topbas.
That the bomber might have entered the country with asylum-seekers fleeing the civil war in Syria likely will increase fears that Islamist militants are exploiting the humanitarian crisis to try to carry out attacks against countries allied against Islamic State.
This afternoon Turkish police arrested one person suspected of a direct link to the deadly bombing along with more than a dozen other suspected ISIS militants, a day after 59 were detained in connection to the explosion.
Yesterday, three more suspected IS members were detained in the southern resort city of Antalya.
The oft-porous border between Turkey and Syria has served as a major transit point for both foreign fighters traveling to Syria to join ISIS and fighters who are already in ISIS territory and want to get into Europe to stage attacks. The first suspect with links to the attack was detained late on Tuesday.
“We are working intensely to find the true actors in the background who are using this terror organization”, Davutoglu said, without elaborating. “I see no reason to refrain from trips to Turkey”.
But Berlin says there is no indication its nationals were specifically targeted.
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The Russian Foreign Ministry in November said the number of Russians that left for Syria to fight for the Islamic State group at 2,719. It also sent a tanker aircraft and a frigate to help protect a French aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean.
