Çağatay Kenarlı / Istanbul, Jan 21 () - Turkey has arrested two more suspects over the deadly attack on a tourist spot in Istanbul that killed 10 Germans on Jan. 12. A court in Istanbul placed the suspects, who were detained in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa on Jan. 16, under arrest on Jan. 20 on charges of “premeditated murder and membership in a terror group.”

 

Ten German tourists were killed and another 17 people wounded in a suicide bombing carried out by a Saudi-born Islamic State (IS) militant in the historic center of Istanbul near the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia, the towering former Byzantine church that is now a museum. Turkish authorities identified the bomber as a 28-year-old who entered Turkey on Jan. 5 posing as an asylum seeker.

 

Ankara has often been criticized by its Western allies for not doing enough to combat the jihadi group, who have seized swathes of territory in neighboring Syria as well as Iraq.  

 

IS was blamed for a bomb that killed four people at a Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) rally in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on June 5, 2015. An IS militant also killed 33 civilians on July 20, 2015, at the Amara Cultural Center in the southeastern district of Suruç. The country’s deadliest attack occurred when IS militants killed at least 100 people attending a peace rally in Ankara on Oct. 10, 2015.