A bomb exploded on a popular pedestrian street in Istanbul on Sunday, killing six people and wounding dozens, Turkey’s president said. The blast sent people fleeing as flames rose.
Footage posted online showed ambulances, fire trucks and police at the scene on Istiklal Avenue, a typically crowded thoroughfare popular with tourists and locals and lined with shops and restaurants. In one video, a loud bang could be heard and flames could be seen, as pedestrians turned and ran away.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the blast a “treacherous attack” and said its perpetrators would be punished.
“It would be wrong to say this is undoubtedly a terrorist attack but the initial developments and initial intelligence from my governor is that it smells like terrorism,” Erdogan told a news conference.
Erdogan said six people were killed. Vice President Fuat Oktay later updated the wounded toll to 81, with two in serious condition, and also said it appeared to be a terrorist attack.
Erdogan did not say who was behind the attack but said that “efforts to defeat Turkey and the Turkish people through terrorism will fail today just as they did yesterday and as they will fail again tomorrow.”
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the blast, but Istanbul and other Turkish cities have been targeted in the past by Kurdish separatists, Islamist militants and other groups.
‘People froze’: witness
The president said investigations were ongoing by the police and the governor’s office, including reviewing footage of the area.
“When I heard the explosion, I was petrified, people froze, looking at each other. Then people started running away. What else can you do,” said Mehmet Akus, 45, a worker in a restaurant on Istiklal.
“My relatives called me, they know I work on Istiklal. I reassured them,” he told Reuters.
A helicopter flew above the scene of the blast and a number of ambulances were parked in nearby Taksim Square.
The Kasimpasa police station said all crews were at the scene but gave no further details.
The Turkish Red Crescent said blood was being transferred to nearby hospitals.
Past deadly bombings
Numerous foreign governments offered their condolences, including neighbouring Greece with which relations are tense. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he was “shocked and saddened by the news of the heinous attack.”
If confirmed, it would be the first major bomb blast in Istanbul in several years.
Turkey was hit by a string of bombings between 2015 and 2017 that left more than 500 civilians and security personnel dead. Some of the attacks were perpetrated by the Islamic State group, while others were executed by Kurdish militants who have led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state for increased autonomy or independence.
Turkey has been fighting the militants — known as the PKK and considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union — in the country’s southeast for years.
In one attack, twin bombings outside an Istanbul soccer stadium in December 2016 killed 38 people and wounded 155 in an attack claimed by an offshoot of the PKK.
Following the string of attacks, Turkey launched cross-border military operations into Syria and northern Iraq against Kurdish militants, while also cracking down on Kurdish politicians, journalists and activists at home through broad terror laws that critics say are a way to silence dissent.
Turkey’s media watchdog imposed temporary restrictions on reporting on the explosion — a move that bans the use of close-up videos and photos of the blast and its aftermath. The Supreme Council of Radio and Television has imposed similar bans in the past, following attacks and accidents.
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