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 Several bodies lay on the ground in the Sultanahmet square, close
to the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, a major tourist area of
Turkey's most populous city. A police officer and witness at the
scene reported also seeing several bodies and body parts.
Six German citizens, one Norwegian and one Peruvian were among the
wounded, the Dogan news agency said.
A tour company official told Reuters a group from Germany was in the
area at the time but said there was no immediate information on
whether any of them had been injured.
An official at the German foreign ministry said it could not be
ruled out that German citizens may have been injured and that its
crisis unit and the consulate in Istanbul were urgently working with
the Turkish authorities to find out.
Norway's foreign ministry said one Norweigan man was injured and was
being treated in hospital.
 The attack at the heart of one of the world's most visited cities
comes as Turkey battles Kurdish militants in its southeast and
Islamic State insurgents just across its southern borders in Syria
and Iraq.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Islamist, leftist
and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the
past.
The Istanbul governor's office said the authorities were
investigating the type of explosive used and who might have been
responsible. It said ten people were killed and 15 wounded but gave
no further details.
"We heard a loud sound and I looked at the sky to see if it was
raining because I thought it was thunder but the sky was clear,"
said Kuwaiti tourist Farah Zamani, 24, who was shopping at one of
the covered bazaars with her father and sister.
A police officer at the scene said the square was not densely packed
at the time of the blast, but that small groups of tourists were
wandering around.
"It was unimaginable," he said, describing an amateur video he had
seen of the immediate aftermath, with six or seven bodies lying on
the ground and other people seriously wounded.
Turkey's AHaber television said the blast may have been caused by a
suicide bomber but this was not independently confirmed. Ambulances
rushed to the scene, ferrying away the wounded as police cordoned
off streets, fearing a second attack.
"The explosion was very loud. We shook a lot. We ran out and saw
body parts," one woman who works at a nearby antiques store told
Reuters, declining to give her name. "TERRORIST LINKS" SUSPECTED
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held an emergency meeting in Ankara
with the interior minister and security chiefs. A senior official
said "terrorist links" were suspected in the attack, but declined to
comment further.
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The dull thud of the explosion was heard in districts of Istanbul
several kilometers away, residents said. Tourist sites including the
Hagia Sophia and the nearby Basilica Cistern were closed on the
governor's orders, officials said.
The sound of the call to prayer rang out from the Blue Mosque as
forensic police officers worked at the scene.
Just over a year ago, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a
police station for tourists off the same square, killing one officer
and wounding another. That attack was initially claimed by a
far-left group, but officials later said it had been carried out by
a woman with suspected Islamist militant links.
Turkey has become a target for Islamic State, with two bombings last
year blamed on the radical Sunni Muslim group, in the town of Suruc
near the Syrian border and in the capital Ankara, the latter killing
more than 100 people.
Violence has also escalated in the mainly Kurdish southeast since a
two-year ceasefire collapsed in July between the state and the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, which has been
fighting for three decades for Kurdish autonomy.
The PKK has however generally avoided attacking civilian targets in
urban centers outside the southeast in recent years.
"Ambulances started rushing in and I knew it was a bomb right away
because the same thing happened here last year," said Ali Ibrahim
Peltek, 40, who operates a kiosk selling snacks and drinks on the
square.
"This is not good for Turkey but everyone was expecting a terrorist
attack," he said.
Davutoglu's office imposed a broadcasting ban on the blast, invoking
a law which allows for such steps when there is the potential for
serious harm to national security or public order.
(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay in Ankara, Humeyra Pamuk and
Daren Butler in Istanbul, Madeline Chambers in Berlin; Writing by
Nick Tattersall; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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