A SYRIAN suicide bomber is thought to have been responsible for an explosion in the heart of Istanbul’s historic tourist district yesterday, which killed 10 people including Turks and foreigners, President Tayyip Erdogan said.

    “I condemn the terror incident in Istanbul assessed to be an attack by a suicide bomber with Syrian origin. Unfortunately we have 10 dead including foreigners and Turkish nationals. There are also 15 wounded,” Erdogan told a lunch for Turkish ambassadors in Ankara, in a speech broadcast live on television.

    Six German citizens, one Norwegian and one Peruvian were among the wounded in the attack in the Sultanahmet square, a major tourist area of Turkey’s most populous city, the Dogan news agency said.

    The attack comes as Turkey battles Kurdish militants in its southeast and Islamic State insurgents just across its southern borders in Syria and Iraq.

    There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Islamist, leftist and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.

    The Istanbul governor’s office said the authorities were investigating the type of explosive used and who might have been responsible.

    “We heard a loud sound and I looked at the sky to see if it was raining because I thought it was thunder but the sky was clear,” said Kuwaiti tourist Farah Zamani, 24, who was shopping at one of the covered bazaars with her father and sister.

    A police officer at the scene said the square was not densely packed at the time of the blast, but that small groups of tourists were wandering around.

    Ambulances rushed to the scene, ferrying away the wounded as police cordoned off streets, fearing a second attack.

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

    Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held an emergency meeting in Ankara with the interior minister and security chiefs. A senior official said “terrorist links” were suspected in the attack, but declined to comment further.

    The dull thud of the explosion was heard in districts of Istanbul several kilometers away, residents said. Tourist sites including the Hagia Sophia and the nearby Basilica Cistern were closed on the governor’s orders, officials said.

    The sound of the call to prayer rang out from the Blue Mosque as forensic police officers worked at the scene.

    Just over a year ago, 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 officials later said it had been carried out by a woman with suspected Islamist militant links.

    Turkey has become a target for Islamic State, 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.

    Violence has also escalated in the mainly Kurdish southeast since a two-year cease-fire collapsed in July between the state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been fighting for three decades for Kurdish autonomy.

    The PKK has however generally avoided attacking civilian targets in urban centers outside the southeast in recent years.

    Davutoglu’s office imposed a broadcasting ban on the blast, invoking a law, which allows for such steps when there is the potential for serious harm to national security or public order.

    (SD-Agencies)