ISTANBUL - Fourteen people died and up to 100 were wounded on Sunday when two bombs exploded in a busy shopping district in Istanbul, officials said.
"It is certain that this is a terror attack," city governor Muammer Guler told reporters at the scene.
TV showed ambulances carrying badly wounded people to hospital after the explosions at two different sites in the Gungoren district of Turkey`s biggest city.
The victims were killed by the second explosion after a small blast in a telephone kiosk brought people out onto the street, NTV television news said.
"First a percussion bomb exploded and then a bomb in a garbage container exploded. Thirteen were killed and more than 100 people were wounded," Deputy Prime Minister Hayati Yazici told reporters.
Governor Guler said the "heinous attack" was not a suicide bombing.
"The blasts occurred in a very busy district and this raised the casualties," he said.
One witness said: "Tens of people were scattered around. People`s heads, arms, were flying in the air."
"We received nearly 30 very heavily wounded people," said Abdullah Toker, a manager at Gungoren Kolon Hospital.
Several groups, including Kurdish separatists, far-left groups and Islamists, have carried out bomb attacks in Istanbul in the past.
Turkey has been plunged into political uncertainty by a court case over banning the ruling party that begins on Monday.
The Constitutional Court will deliberate on whether the AK Party has engaged in Islamist activities and should be closed.
The court can find the AK Party not guilty and dismiss the case, or convict it and either fine or ban the party and some of its leaders, in which case the government will fall and early parliamentary elections be called, possibly in November.
The case has entrenched the opposition between a government which, though rooted in political Islam, denies the charge of trying to introduce Islamic rule, and an establishment which sees itself as the guardian of secularism. (Reporting by Selcuk Gokoluk; Writing by Richard Meares)
Source: Reuters