Explosions Rock Istanbul Soccer Stadium, Leaving Multiple Wounded – NPR

Turkish police officer cordon off the roads leading to the area of the Besiktas football club stadium, in Istanbul, late Saturday. Two loud explosions have been heard near the newly-built soccer stadium. Turkish authorities have banned distribution of images relating to the Istanbul explosions within Turkey.

Emrah Gurel/AP

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Emrah Gurel/AP

Turkish police officer cordon off the roads leading to the area of the Besiktas football club stadium, in Istanbul, late Saturday. Two loud explosions have been heard near the newly-built soccer stadium. Turkish authorities have banned distribution of images relating to the Istanbul explosions within Turkey.

Emrah Gurel/AP

At least two explosions have struck a large soccer stadium in Istanbul, leaving at least 20 police officers wounded, according to the Turkish interior minister. Suleyman Soylu says the source appears to have been a car bomb that targeted a riot police bus outside Vodafone Stadium.

“It is thought to be a car bomb at a point where our special forces police were located, right after the match at the exit where Bursaspor fans exited, after the fans had left,” Soylu said, according to The Guardian. “We have no information on the number of dead. God willing, we hope there won’t be any. The wounded are police.”

The BBC reports that at least 13 people have been killed and that Soylu said the explosion happened at one of the stadium’s exits, “where our special forces police were located.”

The stadium had played host to a game between the teams Bursaspor and Besiktas earlier in the day. In a tweeted statement, the Turkish soccer team Bursaspor said that none of its fans appear to have been harmed in the attack.

The Turkish transport minister, Ahmet Arslan, tweeted that the explosion was a terrorist attack.

“I condemn the terror attack on Besiktas, Istanbul, and wish all those injured a speedy recovery,” Arslan said, according to The Guardian.

Saturday’s violence comes at a time of prolonged political upheaval in Turkey. As reporter Teri Schultz reported, a failed military coup attempt in July has been followed by months of purges across Turkish society:

“Some 110,000 government bureaucrats, teachers, journalists, soldiers and others have been detained, fired or suspended from their jobs in Turkey on suspicion of aiding or sympathizing with the coup attempt.”

Among them are hundreds of Turkish military personnel working for NATO, who have been accused of participating in the failed ouster of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

At the same time, CNN reports that Turkey has been hit with violence from several different angles:

“ISIS militants have mounted a series of devastating bombings that have claimed the lives of hundreds of Turks.

“Meanwhile, Turkish security forces continue to clash on a nearly daily basis with PKK militants, mostly in predominantly Kurdish parts of southeastern Turkey.”

Just last month, a car bomb killed eight people in Diyarbakir, the largest city in the majority-Kurdish southeast.