Friday, Mar 29th 2024
Trending News

Explosion rocks central Istanbul tourist square; 10 dead, 15 wounded

By FnF Desk | PUBLISHED: 12, Jan 2016, 15:59 pm IST | UPDATED: 13, Jan 2016, 16:03 pm IST

Explosion rocks central Istanbul tourist square; 10 dead, 15 wounded Istanbul: Ten people were killed and fifteen others were wounded after a large explosion rocked a central Istanbul square on Tuesday, a statement from the Istanbul governor's office said.

Investigations were being conducted into the type of explosive which caused the blast and those responsible, the governor's office statement said.

The cause of the explosion is under investigation, but state-run TRT television said it was likely caused by a suicide bomber.

Police have sealed the area, barring people from approaching in case of a second explosion.

The Sultanahmet neighborhood is Istanbul's main sight-seeing area and includes the Topkapi Palace and Blue Mosque.

Turkey suffered two major bombing attacks last year. The force of the blast was sufficient to be heard in adjacent neighbourhoods, witnesses told AFP. TV reports said several were wounded but there was no further detail on the toll.

Turkey is on alert after 103 people were killed on 10 October when two suicide bombers attacked a crowd of peace activists in the capital Ankara, the bloodiest strike in the country's modern history.

That operation was blamed on Islamic State (IS) jihadists, as were two other bloody assaults in the country's Kurdish-dominated southeast earlier in the year.

Turkish authorities have in recent weeks detained several suspected IS members with officials saying they were planning attacks in Istanbul.

But Turkey is also waging an all-out assault on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has staged dozens of deadly attacks against members of the security forces in the southeast of the country.

A Kurdish splinter group, the the Freedom Falcons of Kurdistan (TAK) claimed a mortar attack on Istanbul's second international airport on December 23 which killed a female cleaner and damaged several planes

Meanwhile the banned ultra-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) has also staged a string of usually small-scale attacks in Istanbul over the last months.

More than 30 people were killed in an Islamic State suicide attack in the town of Suruc, near Turkey's border with Syria, in July.

Two suicide bombs in October outside Ankara's main train station as people gathered for a peace rally killed more than 100 people. It was Turkey's deadliest attack. The prosecutor's office said the attack was carried out by a local Islamic State cell.