10 dead, 15 wounded in Istanbul tourist district explosion

It is unclear whether the death toll includes the bomber. “Paris has been hit, Tunisia has been hit, Ankara has been hit before”, she said.

Erdogan did not specify which group, specifically, his government thinks is responsible for Tuesday’s explosion, which happened between the Hagia Sofia and Blue Mosque tourist attractions in the cultural and historic heart of the city. The Dogan news agency said nine Germans and one Peruvian were also wounded.

“Travellers in Istanbul are strongly urged to avoid for now giant teams of individuals in public locations in addition to tourist points of interest” and to keep knowledgeable by way of official journey advisories and the media, the overseas ministry stated.

Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member and candidate for accession to the European Union, is part of a U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State fighters who have seized territory in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

The Turkish government allows the United States to launch strikes on ISIS positions from Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.

“Visa allowances are also likely to get restricted and borders securities tightened as the operation was blamed on Islamic State”.

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.

Police sealed the area, and helicopters patrolled overhead.

Anadolu quoted a Shop owner Sener Ozdemir who was on the site as saying: “I’ve never heard such a loud explosion in my life”, he said.

The authorities imposed a broadcast ban on reporting of the attack, prompting television channels to halt live broadcasting from the scene although factual commentaries continued.

Turkey suffered two major bombing attacks past year, both blamed on the Islamic State group.

It was also reported that according to Turkey’s intelligence service, 100 people from those who joined the IS in Syria learned how to make bombs. The prosecutor’s office said that attack was carried out by a local IS cell.

At least ten people, a lot of them German tourists, were killed in a suicide bombing in Istanbul on Tuesday.

The head of Berlin travel agency Lebenslust Touristik has told Germany’s Bild newspaper that some of the victims of a suicide bombing in Istanbul had booked their trip through his office. Turkish President Erdogan has stated that the suicide bomber was of Syrian origin.

Kurtulmus also told a news conference in Ankara that two of the 15 people wounded in the attack were in a serious condition.

Turkey had become a “top target for all terrorist groups in the region”, he added, vowing to continue “fighting against all of them equally”.

And Erdogan used his televised address to denounce foreign writers, including Noam Chomsky, who have publicly criticized his administration.

The tiresome thud of the blast was heard in districts of Istanbul several kilometres away, residents said. We were just in the corner, just out of sight. “So we are going to see in the coming months, economic costs resulting from this attack as well”. Then, people were just running in every direction.

At least one Norwegian, a brother of the defense attorney for a man declared a national security threat in Norway, is among those injured after a mid-morning explosion in Istanbul.

The highly effective blast rocked the Sultanahmet neighbourhood which is residence to Istanbul’s largest focus of monuments and is visited by tens of hundreds of vacationers each day.

The victims were taken to hospitals nearby mainly Haseki Training and Research Hospital.

“This is not good for Turkey but everyone was expecting a terrorist attack”, he said.

On Oct. 10, 2015, some 97 people were killed and over 240 people were injured as a result of a terrorist attack in Ankara. The blast occurred near a local tram station close to the Obelisk of Theodosius, an ancient Egyptian monolith brought to Istanbul – then known as Constantinople – in the 4th century.