A tour guide’s great sense of hearing helped prevent more people from being killed by a suicide bomber in Turkey.
Sibel Satiroglu heard a “click”– and immediately sounded the alarm, screaming “Run!” — the moment a suicide bomber detonated his charge – killing 10 and injuring 15 others Tuesday in Istanbul.
“I heard a ‘click’ sound while I was telling the group about the obelisk. I thought it (the sound) was strange and looked around,” she told Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper.
“Among the group was a young bearded man who looked like a Turk. He had an innocent face and was wearing modern clothes,” she said. “I saw the young man pull the pin and I shouted ‘Run!’ in German. Then we started to run away, and the bomb instantly exploded.”
Satiroglu suffered a leg injury and temporary hearing loss in the attack, which was blamed on Islamic State jihadists.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said Wednesday that one person has been arrested in connection with the deadly blast. He did not explain the suspect’s role in the strike.
Nabil Fadli, a 28-year-old Syrian, blew himself up amid 33 German tourists admiring the iconic Obelisk of Theodosius in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district on Tuesday morning, according to officials in Ankara.
The Sabah newspaper said he had entered Turkey as a refugee on Jan. 5 and promptly fingerprinted.
Turkish media reported that police had raided a home in an affluent Istanbul neighborhood, detaining a woman suspected of having links to the Islamic State, The AP reported. It was not clear if she was the suspect Ala mentioned.
The terror group hasn’t claimed responsibility for the attack.
Turkish authorities also arrested 13 suspected Islamic State militants – including three Russian nationals — across the country, but it was unclear if any of them were directly connected to the attack.
The Russians, who were nabbed in the Mediterranean coastal city of Antalya, were allegedly in contact with Islamic State fighters in conflict zones and had provided logistical support to the group, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
Ten other people were detained in Turkey’s third-largest city, Izmir, and in the central city of Konya.
“The investigation is continuing in a very intensive way,” Ala told reporters in Istanbul alongside German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere.
De Maiziere said there was “no indication” the attack specifically targeted Germans.
“It was an attack against humanity,” de Maiziere said. “I see no reason to refrain from trips to Turkey.”
Turkey has been hit by a series of deadly, jihadi-linked attacks in the last year — including a double suicide bombing that killed more than 100 people in Ankara in October.