The reports did not make clear if there was any link to Tuesday’s suicide bombing in Sultanahmet Square in central Istanbul, which the authorities said was carried out by an ISIL extremist who came from Syria.
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“This person was not someone who was being monitored”, Davutoglu said. “Among these links, apart from Daesh, we have the suspicion that there could be certain powers using Daesh”, he said, using an Arabic name for Islamic State.
Iranian Interior Minister Efkan Ala announced the arrest Wednesday in a joint press conference with his German counterpart, Thomas de Mazière. Turkish media reports said German and Peruvian tourists were also among those hurt.
According to eyewitnesses, the suicide bomber behind the attack aimed specifically for where the German tourists were. Nine of the 10 killed were reportedly German tourists.
Turkey has become a target for Islamic State, with two bombings past year blamed on the radical Sunni Muslim group, in the town of Suruc near the Syrian border and in the capital Ankara, the latter killing more than 100 people.
The attacker targeted the historic square in the country’s economic center.
Tourists walk past carnations left at the site of Tuesday’s explosion in the historic Sultanahmet district in Istanbul, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016.
The explosion went off by the Obelisk of Theodosius, a monument from ancient Egypt, one of the city’s most iconic landmarks.
The attack on tourists is seen as a direct challenge to the state.
As the investigation into Tuesday’s carnage widened, worries also were raised about potential blows to Turkey’s critical tourism industry after the dead and wounded – mostly Germans- fell just a stone’s throw from some of the city’s most iconic landmarks.
Members of Turkish medical association (TTB) lay flowers in Istanbul’s tourist hub of Sultanahmet.
Ten people died in the blast, and a further 15 were injured, many of them also German.
“Among the group was a young bearded man who looked like a Turk”.
“I saw the young man pull the pin and I shouted ‘Run!’ in German (‘Lauft weg!’)”.
In impromptu remarks at his weekly audience, Pope Francis called on all believers to pray for the victims. During his weekly audience, Francis asked God to “give eternal peace to the dead, comfort to the relatives, determined solidarity to the entire society and to convert the hearts of the violent”.
Germany promised Tornado reconnaissance jets to aid military effort against the Islamic State group in Syria following the November attacks in Paris, and they started flying missions from the Incirlik air base in Turkey last week.
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In a Wednesday raid on what is believed to be an Islamic State cell, three Russians were detained.
