Officials say 10 dead, 15 injured in Istanbul

An explosion in a popular Istanbul tourist zone killed at least 10 people on Tuesday, officials said. Turkey, he added, was “fighting against all of them equally”.

The blast, which could be heard over a wide area, hit a park that is home to a landmark obelisk, 30 yards from the historic Blue Mosque.

Numan Kurtulmuş, the Deputy Prime Minister, said most of the victims are foreigners and that the perpetrator had been identified using his body parts.

There was a group of German tourists on the square at the time of the blasts, an official from a tour company told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

German chancellor Angela Merkel said nine of those killed were part of a German travel group.

“Today Istanbul was the target, before Paris, Copenhagen, Tunis, and so many other areas”, she told reporters in Berlin. A spokesman for the National Security Council said the U.S. stood by its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ally Turkey, pledging “our ongoing cooperation and support in the fight against terrorism“.

“(It is) a center for the cultural history that ISIS is so deeply opposed to”, said Sajjan Gohel, worldwide security director at the Asia-Pacific Foundation, noting that ISIS in Syria has targeted just the kind of monuments found in Sultanahmet Square.

Al Jazeera’s Emre Rende, reporting from Istanbul, said information was scarce immediately after the blast.

Addressing a gathering of ambassadors in capital Ankara later, President Erdogan blamed a Syrian suicide bomber for the attack, noting that there were foreign citizens among those killed.

Istanbul authorities are investigating the incident and the type of the explosives used in the blast, the governor’s office said.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu convened an emergency security meeting of key ministers and officials, including powerful Interior Minister Efkan Ala and spy chief Hakan Fidan.

More than 100 people were killed in Turkey’s deadliest attack when two suicide bombs exploded as people gathered in October for a peace rally outside Ankara’s main railway station. Turkeys Dogan news agency reported that one Norwegian and one Peruvian were also among the wounded, and Seouls Foreign Ministry told reporters via text message that a South Korean had a finger injury. Norway’s Foreign Ministry later confirmed that one Norwegian citizen was injured in the blast and is receiving treatment at a local hospital.

Germany warned its nationals to avoid tourist sites in Istanbul, a city of about 14 million people that has been hit several times in the past by deadly attacks. Turkish media reports say several people have been injured in the explosion.

Erdogan said in televised remarks that both Turks and foreigners were among the dead in the explosion in the Sultanahmet district. He said that the German government is in contact with Turkish authorities and condemned the attack as a “barbaric act of terrorism”.

“We’re taking precautions against a second explosion”, the police officer said, ushering people out of the square.

“The style of the attack, a suicide bomber and the attack, a group of tourists, suggests a jihadist attack”, a Western diplomat told AFP.