Bomb attack in Istanbul

TURKEY: A bomb attack targeting police in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul Tuesday injured at least 15 people, most of them police officers, officials and media reports said.

Police said it was not immediately clear who was behind the blast in the Kucukcekmece district, on the European side of the city straddling the Bosphorus Strait.

The bomb went off as a police minibus carrying officers to work was passing in front of a hospital in the morning rush hour.

"It looks like a bomb that was placed by the side of the road...It may have been set off by remote control," Istanbul police chief Huseyin Capkin told the Anatolia news agency.

"We currently have no information on the perpetrators of the attack, we are investigating," he added.

He said 15 officers were injured in the blast while the Anatolia news agency reported that two passers-by were treated as outpatients in a nearby hospital.

The NTV news channel said most of the casualties had shrapnel injuries, none of them serious.

Tuesday's bomb blast came as Turkey was hosting several leaders for the summit of an Asian security grouping in the city, among them Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Istanbul, a sprawling metropolis of more than 13 million people, has in the past been the scene of bomb attacks. Istanbul,Tuesday, AFP