Suicide blast at Istanbul police station kills officer

A female suicide bomber attacked a police station in a historic district of Istanbul on Tuesday, killing one officer and wounding another.

According to the Istanbul governor, Vasip Sahin, a woman tried to enter the building of the tourism police in Sultanahmet saying that she was a tourist and had lost her wallet. Turkish media reported that she detonated an explosive device inside the guard cabin close to the police station entrance.

One officer died from his wounds in hospital. He was named as Kenan Kumas, who had a wife and a two-month-old baby.

Mr Sahin said the woman spoke English as she entered the building, but added that her identity and nationality remained unknown. One Turkish TV channel reported that she wore a niqab, but this has not been independently confirmed.

A witness told CNN Turk reporters that the assailant was a “well-dressed woman, about 1.7m tall”. He said she asked him and his colleagues for the address of the tourism police station in “badly accented English”.

Police sealed off the street of the attack, a stone’s throw from one of Istanbul’s most visited squares, between the Hagia Sophia Museum and the Blue Mosque. Public transport was briefly shut down but later resumed.

The Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said two other bombs were found and disarmed at the scene. He thanked the police who he said had prevented further bloodshed. "Our heroic security forces sacrificed themselves in order to prevent that there were even more victims. Two other bombs were disarmed. We ordered a thorough investigation," he said.

No group claimed responsibility. The attack comes less than a week after the outlawed far-left DHKP-C (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front) announced it was behind an assault on police near the office of the prime minister in Istanbul on Thursday, and threatened further strikes. – (Guardian service)