Friday, March 29

At least six dead and 53 injured in a “terrorist attack” in central Istanbul

An explosion has taken place in a central pedestrian street in Istanbul, Turkey, and at the moment has left at least four dead and 38 injured who are being treated, as confirmed by the city’s governor, Ali Yerlikaya. Shortly after, upon his arrival at the G20 meeting, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan confirmed a “bomb attack” and assured that the perpetrators “will be persecuted”.

“There are people who have died in a bomb attack at 4:20 p.m. (2:20 p.m. Spanish time) in Istiklal. I offer my condolences to the dead and my wishes for recovery to the injured. The state will find the organizers of this terrorist attack,” Erdogan said in an appearance on public television TRT.

The first images show several people lying on the ground on İstiklal Avenue or Independence Avenue, one of the most famous in Istanbul. Ali Yerlikaya reported shortly after, through his Twitter account, that the explosion occurred shortly after 4:00 p.m. local time (2:00 p.m. on the peninsula).

In some videos broadcast on social networks, an explosion is seen, in the form of a flare, in the middle of the street, a pedestrian area full of shops that is usually full of passers-by at all hours of the day, including many tourists.

The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, has urged the population not to pay attention to alarmist messages on social networks about the alleged causes of the explosion. At the same time, Turkey’s telecommunications authority RTUK banned broadcasters from reporting from the scene and police cordoned off the scene, a street lined with shops, adjacent to the iconic Taksim Square, which is usually packed with people.

A Turkish league football match, which was to take place between Besiktas and Antalyaspor, in a stadium located just 700 meters from Taksim, has been postponed to another date, as reported by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF). in his web page.

The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, has expressed his condolences to the victims of the explosion that has left at least six dead and more than fifty injured in the well-known Istiklal street in Istanbul. “Horrible news from Istanbul tonight. Condolences to the victims of the explosion in Istiklal ”, he has indicated through his profile on Twitter.

In 2016 there were several terrorist attacks in Turkey, most of them carried out by networks of the Islamic State terrorist group, in Istanbul, one of them on Istiklal street itself. However, after the massacre caused by a jihadist on New Year’s Eve that year in a nightclub on the banks of the Bosphorus, no attacks had been recorded in the city again.





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