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Explosion Rocks Central Istanbul, Killing at Least 10

The Istanbul governor's office said the authorities were investigating the type of explosive used and who might have been responsible for the attack.
Photo par Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

An explosion in the heart of Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet tourist district killed at least 10 people, most of them German tourists, and wounded 15 on Tuesday. Senior Turkish security officials said there is a high probability that Islamic State (IS) militants were responsible for the blast and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a Syrian suicide bomber is thought to have carried out the attack.

"I condemn the terror incident in Istanbul assessed to be an attack by a suicide bomber with Syrian origin," Erdogan said.

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At least nine of the people killed were German citizens, a senior Turkish government official said. One Peruvian man was killed and a Peruvian woman wounded, according to Peru's foreign ministry. Norway said one Norwegian man was injured and was being treated in hospital.

Several bodies lay on the ground in the square, close to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, a major tourist area of Turkey's most populous city. A police officer and witness at the scene reported also seeing several bodies and body parts.

Most of those killed in the explosion are foreigners, according to Turkey's deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus. He also said the suspected bomber had been identified from body parts as a Syrian born in 1988.

Close to the scene is Istanbul's old city, another major tourist attraction, where hotels, sidewalk cafes, and souvenir stores in old Ottoman buildings line narrow, winding cobblestone streets.

Two Australians staying there said they they were sitting in the hotel's cafe having breakfast when they heard a bang. They went down the street to see what had happened, but after seeing police and ambulances arriving, they decided that was unwise.

"We went down there then but there were a lot of people hovering around, so we kinda got scared because, sometimes these things happen in multiples so we got out of there pretty quick," said Brett Cooney, 28, as he and his traveling companion, Bridget Patterson, 28, checked news updates and snacked on nuts in the hotel lobby.

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Cooney and Patterson said they had planned to do more sightseeing this afternoon but decided against it.

"We wanted to go to the (Topkapi) Palace but we're a bit scared to do that, so we'll probably just stay here," said Patterson. "I'm sure it would be fine but I'm not gonna take that risk."

A tourist passes in front of Hagia Sophia Museum after the explosion. (Photo by Tolga Bozoglu/EPA)

Cooney added that after the November 13 Paris attacks, in which gunmen and suicide bombers targeted a number of locations in the French capital, he feared another attack could occur today.

They also said that they noticed an absence of visible security precautions in Istanbul compared with European cities they had visited on their tour, which included Spain, France, and Italy.

"There was nothing down there," Patterson said, gesturing to the scene of the attack, a site called the Obelisk of Theodosius — an ancient Egyptian monument shipped to Istanbul by a Roman Emperor in the 4th Century AD — which they visited on Sunday.

"Yeah, it surprised us that these other cities had so much security but there was really none here."

Paramedics help wounded people after an explosion near the Blue Mosque, in the Sultanahmet district of central Istanbul. (Photo via EPA) 

Alp Unco, a 37-year-old man who runs a publishing house a block away from the scene, told VICE News he ran outside when he heard the blast. "I saw people injured on the ground — five to six people — they didn't move," he said as his hands shook. "It was horrible — I was in shock."

Unco said his friends called him to make sure he was okay because they felt the explosion at their home, five kilometers (3.1 miles) away from the site of the incident.

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Tuna Godes is the 31-year-old manager of a hotel just a few blocks away from the site of the blast, in the heart of Istanbul's tourist quarter. He told VICE News he thought the explosion was thunder — until he looked outside and saw the sky was blue.

"Then we understood. We were expecting this kind of thing. It's terrible. Now the tourism is destroyed in Turkey. And many people are dead."

Godes said Turkey's tourism sector was already suffering due to the instability in the region —and he now fears that most tourists will be afraid to come to Istanbul after this attack targeting one of the city's most iconic sites.

"We had four guests — they are leaving today — they are in their rooms because they are scared and in shock."

(Photo by Tolga Bozoglu/EPA)

Emergency personnel work at the scene of the explosion near the Blue Mosque, in the Sultanahmet district of central Istanbul. (Photo by Sedat Suna/EPA)

The Istanbul governor's office said the authorities were investigating the type of explosive used and who might have been responsible for the attack. It said 10 people were killed and 15 wounded but gave no further details.

Authorities quickly announced a "temporary" ban on reporting the blast, citing national security and public order reasons. Some local outlets continued broadcasting, including CNN Turk, which claimed the order only applied to images from the scene.

"The explosion was very loud. We shook a lot. We ran out and saw body parts," one woman who works at a nearby antiques store told Reuters, declining to give her name.

Ambulances rushed to the scene, ferrying away the wounded as police cordoned off streets. "We're taking precautions against a second explosion," the police officer said, ushering people out of the square.

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Members of Turkish SWAT teams stand guard on a building after the explosion near the Blue Mosque, Istanbul. (Photo by Sedat Suna/EPA)

The blast comes just over a year after a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a police station for tourists off the same square, killing one officer and wounding another. That attack was initially claimed by a far-left group, but later turned out to have been perpetrated by a woman with suspected Islamist militant links, officials said.

Kurdish, leftist and Islamist militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.

Turkey has also become a target for IS, with two bombings last 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.