Turkey Shelled IS in Iraq, Syria after Istanbul Attack, Says PM

Turkish ground forces pounded Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria after a suicide attack blamed on the group killed 10 German tourists, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday.

"After the heinous attack in Istanbul, our armed forces hit in the last 48 hours some 500 positions of Daesh in Syria and Iraq with artillery and tank fire," Davutoglu told Turkish ambassadors in Ankara, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

Around 200 IS members were killed in the assault, he said. It was not possible to independently verify the toll.

"Every attack that targets Turkey's guests will be punished," he added.

Turkey has often been criticized by its Western allies for not doing enough to combat IS jihadists who have seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

But Ankara last year stepped up its involvement in the U.S.-led coalition against IS, hosting American war planes at its Incirlik air base for deadly raids against the jihadists and conducting air strikes of its own.

There was no suggestion from Davutoglu that Turkey had carried out air strikes against IS in the past 48 hours and it appeared that all the fire had been from the ground.

The premier said Turkey was determined to dislodge IS jihadists fully from the Syrian border, which analysts says they have controlled for much of last year.

"We will continue to fight the Daesh terror organization in a determined way until it leaves the Turkish border area completely and as long as it behaves in a way that tarnishes the name of our holy religion Islam," he said.

Turkish authorities have identified the Istanbul suicide bomber as a 28-year-old Syrian who entered Turkey on January 5 along with a group of people fleeing the country's civil war. At the border, he was fingerprinted by migration authorities but never placed on any wanted list.

Turkey is currently hosting around 2.2 million refugees who have fled the fighting in Syria, and Davutoglu was quick to warn against seeing all migrants as potential extremists, which he said would be playing into the hands of the "terrorists".

So far, a total of seven suspects have been arrested in connection with the bombing, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said on Thursday.

In addition, Turkish security forces rounded up over 70 suspected IS members across the country over the last few days, but it was not clear if any of them were directly connected to the Istanbul attack.

According to the Anatolia news agency, there are at least six Russian citizens among them.

Turkey was hit by three attacks blamed on IS in 2015, including a including a double suicide bombing in October in Ankara that killed 103 people, the country's worst-ever attack.

All those attacks targeted pro-Kurdish groups, who are vehemently opposed to IS. The attack on the German tourists, however, was the first time that foreign visitors have been targeted in the historic heart of Istanbul.