Six people were killed and 81 others injured on Sunday when an explosion rocked a busy pedestrian street in central Istanbul in what Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called a bomb attack that “smells like terrorism”.
Hundreds of people fled historic Istiklal Avenue after the explosion, as ambulances and police poured in. The area, in the Beyoglu district of Turkey’s biggest city, was packed as usual over the weekend with shoppers, tourists and families.
Video footage obtained by Reuters showed the moment the explosion happened at 4:13 p.m. (1313 GMT), throwing debris into the air and leaving several people lying on the ground while others stumbled.
Hours after the blast, Vice President Fuat Oktay visited the site to give the latest death and injury toll and promised to resolve the matter “very soon”.
Authorities later said a government ministry employee and his daughter were among the dead. Five people were hospitalized in intensive care, and two were in critical condition.
No one claimed responsibility for the explosion
Istanbul and other Turkish cities have been targeted in the past by Kurdish separatists, Islamist militants and other groups, including in a series of attacks in 2015 and 2016.
“Efforts to defeat Turkey and the Turkish people through terrorism will fail today just as they did yesterday and as they will tomorrow,” Erdogan told a news conference before flying to Indonesia for a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies
“Our people can rest assured that the culprits… will be punished as they deserve,” he said, adding that initial information suggested “a woman played a part” in it.
“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,” he added.
State-owned Anadolu quoted Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag as saying a woman sat on a bench for more than 40 minutes before leaving minutes before the explosion, suggesting a bomb that was to explode or that had detonated from afar.