Istanbul blast: One suspect detained

Turkish ground forces heavily shelled Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Iraq and Syria following the suicide attack blamed on the extremist group that killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday.

Amateur footage was captured in the Sultanahmet tourist area of police rushing in to help the wounded – with one police vehicle overturning on the way there.

“There are no indications that the attack specifically targeted Germans, ” German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said during a joint news conference with his Turkish counterpart in Istanbul.

But just as officials tried to reassure nervous tourists, a new blast rocked Turkey – an attack on a police headquarters in the Cinar district of Turkey’s southeastern province of Diyarbakir, Turkey’s semiofficial Anadolu Agency reported, citing local officials. “I thought it was odd and looked around”, she said.

Turkey was quick to identify the bomber, named by Turkish media as 28-year old Saudi-born Nabil Fadli, as the man who had given his fingerprints a week ago at an immigration center. Peru also said one of its nationals had died in the attack.

Berlin said seven injured Germans were being treated in hospital, five of them in intensive care.

Turkey’s interior minister said on Wednesday the suicide bomber was not on any wanted list but had registered with Turkey’s immigration authorities.

The attack is a serious blow to Turkey’s ailing tourism industry which has already been troubled due to Russia’s travel ban following Ankara’s downing of a Russian warplane in November.

The three Russian citizens reportedly detained by the Turkish police over ties with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) were indeed linked with worldwide terrorism, a source in one of Russia’s security agencies said. De Maiziere said those talks will also address “the determined fight against terrorism”.

“Today Istanbul was hit; Paris has been hit, Tunisia has been hit, Ankara has been hit before”, Merkel said Tuesday.

“This is precisely a case where extremists accused of terrorist activity in Russian Federation feel comfortable living for so many years in certain foreign states”, Zakharova told a weekly news briefing. “However, after the attack, all his contacts were brought out”, Davutoglu said. They said he was identified by his fingertips at the site of the explosion. Ten other people were detained in Turkey’s third largest city, Izmir, and in the central city of Konya. He did not rule out possible airstrikes against the group, although a day earlier, he said Russian Federation was obstructing Turkey’s ability to conduct airstrikes against ISIS in Syria.

The nationalities of the two others killed in the blast were not immediately released, but both were foreigners.

“With you in our hearts”, the Haber Turk newspaper read.

Suzan Fraser reported from Ankara.