Update: Bomb blast leaves one injured in Istanbul

One person was wounded when a suspected home-made cluster bomb exploded on Tuesday on an overpass near a metro station in Istanbul's district of Bayrampasa.

The bomb was left on barriers on the overpass and the person was slightly injured, said a statement issued by the Istanbul governor office.

On close circuit TV footage broadcast by Dogan News Agency, the bomb exploded seconds after a minibus carrying riot police passed under the overpass, leading to speculation about targeted attack.

The explosion occurred at 5:30 pm local time during the rush hour and the noise was heard in other parts of the city. Ambulances, fire brigades and police vehicles were dispatched to the scene.

Eyewitnesses told Xinhua that the impact of the explosion was quite powerful and the windows of some passing cars were smashed.

"The traffic was blocked, everywhere on the highway was full of pieces of smashed windows," a young motorcyclist said. He was on the scene several minutes after the explosion.

He was shocked when he saw the number of ambulances trying to reach the area. "I counted almost a dozen and I thought something very serious happened," he noted.

A taxi driver said that he was in front of a nearby hotel when he heard the explosion. "The noise was too loud," he said. "I even thought the whole hotel building collapsed."

The metro system was affected as the bomb exploded several hundred meters away from a metro station.

A window of a train was smashed as well during the explosion, an incident that brought the operations of the metro system to a halt for a while.

Police heightened the security in the area while cordoning off the scene.

Tension is high in Turkey following the murder on Saturday of a top Kurdish lawyer by unknown gunmen in a southeastern province.

A cease-fire between the Turkish government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party collapsed in July when they renewed fighting. Endit