Turkey Arrests Two more over Istanbul Attack

A Turkish court on Wednesday remanded in custody pending trial two more suspects over a suicide bombing blamed on the Islamic State (IS) group that killed 10 German tourists in Istanbul last week, reports said.

A court in Istanbul placed the suspects -- who were detained in southeastern city of Sanliurfa on Saturday -- under arrest on charges of "premeditated murder and membership in a terror group", the Anatolia news agency reported.

The arrest of the pair, whose nationalities were not disclosed, raised the number of suspects held in custody over the January 12 bombing to 12, after ten others were charged on Sunday.

Meanwhile counter-terrorism police on Wednesday detained another suspect in a raid on an address in Ankara, news agency Dogan said.

Ten German tourists were killed and another 17 people wounded in the bombing 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 have identified the bomber as a 28-year-old Syrian who entered Turkey on January 5 posing as a refugee, with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu saying the man was a member of IS.

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

But Turkey has in recent months stepped up the fight against IS after several deadly attacks blamed on the group, including a double suicide bombing in October in Ankara that killed 103 people.