Syrian ISIL bomber kills 10 foreigners in heart of Istanbul’s tourist district

Eight Germans and a Peruvian man were among those killed. The nationality of the tenth victim was not clear on Tuesday night, though Turkey's prime minister said that all of the dead were foreigners.

People get away from the area after an explosion near the Blue Mosque in the Sultanahmet district of central Istanbul on January 12, 2016. Tolga Bozoglu/EPA

ISTANBUL // A Syrian ISIL suicide bomber killed at least 10 people, all of them foreigners, and wounded 15 others on Tuesday in an attack at the heart of Istanbul’s historic tourist centre.

The bombing sent shock waves around a country already grappling with rising violence on several fronts.

The powerful blast, which occurred at around 10.20am local time and only metres from some of Turkey’s most famous Ottoman and Byzantine tourist sights in the Sultanahmet district, could be heard across the city several kilometres away.

Television footage minutes after the explosion showed chaotic scenes as police tried to secure the area and wailing ambulances rushed to the site. Several bodies could be seen lying on the ground.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, condemned the attack and urged the country to come together in its fight against terrorism.

“I would like to express my condemnation of the terror incident in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet Square, which is being evaluated as an attack by a suicide bomber of Syrian origin,” Mr Erdogan said on live television, hours after the bombing.

“This incident has shown once again that as a country we need to stand with one heart and one body in the face of terror and in the face of terrorist organisations,” he said.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility, but Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, speaking later on Tuesday, said the bomber had been a member of ISIL.

Deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus confirmed the bomber had been identified as a Syrian national born in 1988 and that an investigation had been launched into anyone that may have had links to the attacker.

Eight of those killed were German, said the country’s foreign minister, Franz-Walter Steinmeier, adding that nine other Germans were injured, some seriously.

“The terrorists are the enemies of all free people, they are enemies of humanity, be it in Syria, Turkey or France or Germany,” said German chancellor Angela Merkel, stressing that Berlin would fight such terror “with determination”.

One Peruvian man was also killed and a Peruvian woman wounded, Peru’s foreign ministry said.

Mr Davutoglu confirmed that all of the dead were foreigners but it was not clear which nationality the tenth victim belonged to.

“The explosion was so loud, the ground shook. There was a very heavy smell that burnt my nose,” said a German tourist called Caroline. “I started running away with my daughter. We went into a nearby building and stayed there for half an hour. It was really scary.”

Previous attacks have been carried out across Turkey by religious extremists, and Kurdish and leftist militants.

In January 2015, a female suicide bomber killed one Turkish policeman at a police station for tourists in the same Sultanahmet square. The attack was claimed by the leftist DHKP-C militant group but Turkish officials later said the bomber had links to religious extremists.

The nationality of Tuesday’s attacker and the target of the bombing – foreign tourists in the heart of Turkey’s largest city – would also support Ankara’s assertion the bomber was an a member of ISIL, which is battling the United States and regional allies, including Turkey, just across the border in Syria and Iraq.

“Given the target and location of the explosion, it seems like an Islamic State attack. If this was an Islamic State member, the attack would be the first against foreign targets inside Turkey. The previous wave of attacks focused on Kurdish and leftist nationalist targets,” said Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

“This attack is a nightmare for Turkey. Beyond the tragic loss of life, the blast will certainly impact tourism, and therefore negatively affect the Turkish economy,” he said.

Turkey attracts tens of millions of foreign tourists each year as part of a multibillion-dollar industry and analysts have previously warned any direct attack on tourist sights could have a severe impact on future visitor numbers.

Tuesday’s attack also marks the latest escalation in a wave of violence that has hit Turkey – a vital Western ally and Nato member – in recent years, largely as a direct result of the spillover across its frontiers of the wars in Syria and Iraq.

ISIL militants were blamed for at least two major bombings in Turkey last year, one near the Syrian border and one in the capital, Ankara, which together killed more than 130 people.

Fighting has also intensified in recent months between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who declared an end to a unilateral ceasefire last year, with violent clashes entering city centres in the country’s predominantly Kurdish south-east.

Both sides have suffered casualties as well as civilians caught in the crossfire. The PKK, classified a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, has been fighting the Turkish state for three decades, first for an independent Kurdish state and later for greater autonomy.

The PKK has generally avoided attacking civilian targets in western parts of Turkey in recent years. However, a separate Kurdish militant group once linked to the PKK, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), claimed responsibility for a mortar attack on Istanbul’s second airport last month that killed one woman.

Ankara has more recently increased security measures and tightened its borders after coming under domestic and international criticism for not doing enough to stem the flow of extremist fighters across its frontiers but has strongly rebuffed allegations it has sympathised with the ISIL.

“I say here very clearly, is there another country in the world that is fighting this so-called Daesh terror organisation more decisively than Turkey and that has paid a higher price?” Mr Erdogan said after Tuesday’s bombing, referring to ISIL.

“In the same way, we are conducting our fight decisively and with sacrifice against the separatist terror organisation [PKK] but there are some people, even countries, that refuse even to accept this,” he said.

* With agencies