Ayhan Şimşek
January 13, 2016•Update: January 14, 2016
BERLIN
German Federal Criminal Police have sent an investigation team to Istanbul, a day after the terrorist attack that killed 10 German tourists and injured several other people.
Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth said the team will work in cooperation with Turkey and will try to support the ongoing investigation plus identification of victims.
"[The] German Interior Minister has conveyed this morning to his Turkish counterpart our request to receive as much as possible information on the concrete findings of the investigation. This has been confirmed,” Dimroth said at a press conference in Berlin.
“I am very hopeful that we will soon be able to have our own, complete assessment regarding the perpetrators and the details of this barbaric attack,” he said.
A suicide bomber targeted tourists in Istanbul's historical Sultanahmet district on Tuesday morning in an attack that the authorities believe carried out by a Daesh militant of foreign origin.
Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala confirmed Wednesday that the authorities would be able to identify the suspected suicide bomber through a fingerprint which he gave to the immigration authorities almost a week ago.
“But he was not among our list of wanted persons. According to our initial findings, his name was also not among the list of suspected terrorists sent to us by other countries,” Ala told a press conference with his German counterpart in Istanbul.
German Foreign Ministry Deputy spokeswoman Sawsah Chebli told reporters on Wednesday that the number of German citizens killed by the terrorist attack had increased to 10.
“Seven German citizens are currently under treatment in hospitals in Istanbul; among them five are [in an] intensive care unit,” she said at a press conference in Berlin.
In the aftermath of the terror attacks in Istanbul, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, federal minister Peter Altmaier, will travel to Ankara on Thursday.
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Altmaier will have talks with several Turkish ministers in Ankara in preparation for the first intergovernmental summit between Turkey and Germany, which will be held in Berlin on Jan. 22.
Federal minister Peter Altmaier is the government’s coordinator on the refugee crisis and is also responsible for the coordination of German intelligence services.
