By IRNA,
Ankara : Two bombs exploded within minutes of each other late Sunday in a crowded pedestrian area of Istanbul, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 100.
The double bombing appeared to be the worst incident of terrorist violence in Turkey in nearly five years and seemed to take the Turkish authorities completely by surprise.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility, although Kurdish separatist militants were initially suspected.
The Istanbul neighborhood that was targeted, which is almost completely residential, had no obvious reason to be the object of a terrorism plot.
The first blast, which the police and witnesses said was relatively minor, attracted scores of onlookers curious about the commotion, with at least some of them thinking it was caused by a gas leak explosion.
Many of the curious onlookers were hit by flying shrapnel and debris from the second, more powerful blast about 10 minutes later and about 20 yards away, the governor, Muammer Guler, said in a news briefing carried on Turkish television.
Witnesses described a scene of panic with victims lying on the street in pools of blood.
The timing of the bombings appeared to deliberately coincide with the summer pastime of many residents of the pedestrian area of Gungoren, in central Istanbul, to stroll in the cool late evening before going to bed.
The double-bombing appeared to be the most serious terrorism attack here since twin truck bombings at two Istanbul synagogues killed 23 people and wounded more than 300 on Nov. 15, 2003.
An obscure group linked to al-Qaeda took responsibility for the synagogue blasts, which were the worst in a series of explosions blamed on Islamic extremist groups that year that killed more than 60 people.