Istanbul bomber registered with authorities, but was not on wanted list: minister

The man's fingerprints were said to be on record with the Turkish authorities

ISTANBUL: Turkey's interior minister said on Wednesday the suicide bomber in an attack which killed 10 people in Istanbul's historic tourist district a day earlier was not on any wanted list but had registered with Turkey's immigration authorities.

Efkan Ala said the man's fingerprints were on record with the Turkish authorities, when asked about a report in the Turkish media that the man had registered at an immigration office in Istanbul a week ago.



"Your assessment that his fingerprints were taken and there is a record of him is correct. But he was not on the wanted individuals list. And neither is he on the target individuals list sent to us by other countries," Ala told a news conference.

A Syrian suicide bomber on Tuesday struck the heart of Istanbul’s busiest tourist district, killing 10 people, in the latest deadly attack blamed on Islamic State terrorists.

Images from the scene showed several mutilated corpses lying on the ground close to the iconic Ottoman-era Blue Mosque in Sultanahmet, a district home to Istanbul’s biggest concentration of historic monuments.



Turkey has been hit by a string of deadly attacks this year, but Tuesday’s bombing was the first time in recent memory tourists had been targeted in the heart of the city. The attack on the city of 14 million was sharply condemned by UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who denounced it as ‘despicable’.