Turkish police detain suspects in Istanbul bombing

Turkish police have confirmed that they have arrested five people in connection with the suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 10 Germans.

One of the suspects was detained in Istanbul late on Tuesday, Turkey's interior minister Efkan Ala said during a news conference with his visiting German counterpart.

Turkish media reports said police had raided a home in an affluent neighbourhood of Istanbul, detaining one woman suspected of having links to the Islamic State group, although it was not clear if she was one of the suspects Mr Ala was referring to.

Turkish police have arrested 13 suspected Islamic State militants in total, including three Russian nationals, a day after the bombing in Istanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district near the Blue Mosque.

Turkey's prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu confirmed on Wednesday that the Islamic State suicide bomber entered Turkey as a refugee from Syria and went undetected as he was not on any watchlists.

Mr Davutoglu said the bomber had registered with immigration authorities in the city a week ago.

“This individual was not somebody under surveillance. He entered Turkey normally, as a refugee, as someone looking for shelter,” Mr Davutoglu told a news conference, adding that the bomber had been identified from fragments of his skull, face and nails.

"After the attack his connections were unveiled. Among these links, apart from Daesh, we have the suspicion that there could be certain powers using Daesh," he said, using an Arabic name for Islamic State.

Turkish officials had earlier said that the suicide bomber was a 28-year-old Syrian man, born in 1988 in Saudi Arabia.

German victims

Germany has said there are no indications as yet that Tuesday’s suicide attacker in Istanbul deliberately targeted German citizens.

Nine of those killed in the bombing were German citizens, according to a spokeswoman for the German foreign ministry.

One German citizen was seriously wounded in the blast and had since died, spokeswoman Sawsan Chebli told a news conference in Berlin.

Seven Germans are still recovering from their injuries, five of them in intensive care.

German federal interior minister Thomas de Maizière flew to Istanbul on Wednesday morning and, on his arrival, he thanked the Turkish authorities for assisting families of the victims.

“At this point in our investigation we have no indications that the attack deliberately targeted Germans,” said Mr de Maizière, “so I see no reason to cancel, or not to continue as normal, trips to Turkey”.

The people killed in the Sultanahmet area were on a three-country tour run by a Berlin travel agency that specialised in adventures for people “in the best years of their life”.

The victims came from all over Germany: among them a married couple from Brandenburg; another couple from Mainz in Rhineland-Palatinate; a man from Bad Kreuznach, whose wife survived but is seriously injured.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that it has received no requests for consular assistance from Irish citizens following the attack near the Blue Mosque.

Warning of attack

According to Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, Turkish intelligence warned in December of looming terrorist attacks on tourists.

The warning from December 17th, reissued on January 4th, said that Islamic State suicide bombers had entered the country and were likely to have travelled to Istanbul or Ankara, or on to central Europe.

According to the report the suicide bombers would target “non-Muslims living in Turkey, foreigners, tourist regions, areas frequented by foreign visitors or embassies and consulates . . . and Nato installations in the country”.

At the Wednesday press conference Mr de Maizière said Germany, a member of the anti-Isis alliance, stood by Turkey in its battle against terrorism and would hold joint government consultations with Ankara in Berlin next week.

Additional reporting: Reuters and PA