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At least six people were killed and 81 others injured in the attack in the center of the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul, according to official figures. In the evening, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay spoke of a “terrorist attack” on the busy shopping street of Istiklal.

Video footage shows a suspect sitting on a bench for about 40 minutes and getting up minutes before the blast, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said. The woman’s identity was not immediately clear. Hours after the attack, however, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu reported that the person who placed the explosive device in the shopping street had been arrested. It has not been confirmed whether it is the woman.

According to Soylu, the arrested person has ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party PKK, which is banned in Turkey. According to the state-affiliated TV channel TRT, the interior minister announced retaliation.

The PKK is on terrorist lists in Turkey, Europe and the US, and has positions in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. Their headquarters are in the northern Iraqi Kandil Mountains. Ankara regularly acts against the PKK and has held military posts in northern Iraq since 2016. There are doubts about the compatibility of these operations with international law.

The conflict, which has been going on since 1984, has so far claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people. A ceasefire failed in the summer of 2015.

Erdogan speaks of ‘treacherous attack’

According to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the explosion happened at 4:20 p.m. local time. He spoke of a “sneaky attack” on the metropolis, where about 16 million people live. At least four people died on the spot. Among the dead were a ministry employee and his daughter, Family Minister Derya Yanik wrote on Twitter that evening.

39 of the 81 injured have since been released from hospital, Turkish health minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted. Of the 42 people still under treatment, five were in intensive care, two of whom were considered seriously injured.

A fireball was seen in the middle of the busy street in unverified images shared on social media. Other images, also unverified at first, showed people covered in blood lying motionless on the ground. A waiter at a restaurant near the site of the attack reported a loud bang and saw people running away.

The German Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, among others, expressed her condolences. “Terrible photos come from Istanbul,” the Green politician said on Twitter. “My thoughts are with the people who just wanted to stroll down the Istiklal shopping street on a Sunday and have now been the victims of a massive explosion.”

The Istiklal shopping street is a tourist hotspot in the center of the European part of the Turkish metropolis, where it is often very busy even on Sundays. It was not known at first whether there were also foreigners among the victims.

Rescue workers and police are on the scene in large numbers, state broadcaster TRT reports. Helicopters flew over the Beyoglu district and adjacent districts in the early evening.

Turkish media later stopped reporting the attack. The broadcasting authority Rtük has imposed a temporary news ban on the media. Reports of the explosion must be avoided so as not to cause fear and panic among the population, the letter said in the afternoon. For example, the channels CNN Türk and TRT only broadcast individual interviews with ministers and the president. The Authority for Information Technology and Communication (BTK) would also have reduced the bandwidth for social media platforms in the evening.

There have been repeated attacks in Turkey in the past, including in central Istanbul. For example, in 2016, a suicide bomber blew himself up in Istiklal, killing four people and injuring 39 others. At the time, the Turkish government said the killer had ties to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist militia. The group itself did not disclose the fact at the time. According to official figures, about two million people cross the Istiklal every day.

In the same year, twelve Germans were killed in an IS suicide bombing in the historic center of Istanbul. (sda/dpa)