Local media footage also showed ambulances and fire engines at the scene.
Istanbul:
A loud explosion of unknown origin rocked the busy shopping street of Istiklal in Istanbul on Sunday, killing six people and injuring dozens, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. He also said that early signs point to a “terrorist” attack.
Erdogan said in a televised press conference, “It may be wrong if we say for sure that it is terror but according to the first signs… it smells of terror.”
“The relevant units of our state are working to find the culprits behind this heinous attack,” he said.
Police cordoned off the area where the crowd was thick on Sunday afternoon, and helicopters were flying over the city center as sirens sounded.
“I was 50-55 meters (yards) away when suddenly there was an explosion. I saw three or four people on the ground,” eyewitness Cemal Denijci, 57, told AFP.
He said, “People were running in panic. The noise was huge. There was black smoke. The noise was so loud, almost deafening.”
Parents carried their children in their arms as they fled the area.
The explosion happened in the center #istanbulLocal media reports. pic.twitter.com/s95VcL1BRr
— Nonmua (@NonMyaan) 13 November 2022
Officials have given no indication of what caused the explosion.
According to an AFP video reporter present at the scene, police have formed a large security cordon to block access to the area damaged by the possibility of another explosion.
Heavy deployment of security forces sealed all the entrances uniformly while heavy deployment of rescue workers and police was visible.
The explosion occurred shortly after 4:00 pm (1300 GMT) in Istiklal shopping street, popular among locals and tourists.
According to photographs posted on social media at the time of the blast, the explosion was accompanied by flames and immediately panic spread and people started running in all directions.
A large black crater was also visible in those images, along with several bodies lying on the ground nearby.
Istiklal Street had already been targeted during a campaign of attacks targeting Istanbul in 2015-2016.
Claimed by the Islamic State group, those attacks killed nearly 500 people and injured more than 2,000.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicate feed.)