Blasts in Istanbul hotels kill two

Simultaneous explosions have rocked two hotels in tourist areas of Istanbul, killing two people and injuring seven, in what the city's police chief says was an apparent terrorist attack.

Turkish television pictures early on Tuesday showed emergency services carrying casualties, mostly foreigners, to waiting ambulances at the scene of one of the blasts. Glass and debris lay scattered on the street.

Separately, two bombs exploded at a gas storage complex in an outlying area of the city, causing damage but no casualties, Anatolian news agency quoted a company official as saying.

Istanbul police chief Celalettin Cerrah told Anatolian the hotel blasts occurred around 2 a.m. local time (midnight British time). The agency said two people were killed and seven injured. The injuries were not life-threatening, it added.

"These appear to be a terrorist attack," Cerrah told reporters at the scene of one of the explosions.

CNN Turk television identified one of the dead as 31-year-old Haydar Baydar from Van in eastern Turkey. Anatolian said the wounded consisted of two Dutch citizens, two Chinese, a Ukrainian, a Turk and a Turkmenistan national.

Officials at police headquarters declined to give details.

Istanbul, Turkey's largest city and commercial capital, has been targeted repeatedly by bomb attacks in recent years.

There was no claim of responsibility for the latest blasts, but Kurdish militants, far-leftists and radical Islamist groups have all carried out bomb attacks in the city in the past.

PHONE TIP-OFF

The two dead were killed in an explosion on the third floor of the Pars Hotel in Istanbul's Laleli district, an area popular with east European traders.

Hotel staff said someone had telephoned them 10 minutes before the blast to say there was a bomb in one of the rooms. There were 37 guests in the six-storey hotel at the time.

The other explosion happened on the second floor of the Holiday Hotel in the popular tourist district of Sultanahmet -- the historical heart of Istanbul -- where many of its Byzantine and Ottoman monuments are located.

Police sealed off the area around the hotel and forensic teams searched through the debris for evidence. There were 20 people in that hotel at the time, but there was no detail on casualties.

Anatolian said police also searched several hotels in the area for suspects and further explosive devices.

The agency said the blasts at the gas storage complex followed a telephone tip-off about a bomb, and a company official said intruders had cut through a fence at the complex.

"These people put two bombs in the storage area, which exploded at a 30-minute interval. There was a gas leak, but we stopped that and there is currently no danger," company official Tayfun Demiroren was quoted as saying.

Four people were working in the complex at the time but were unhurt. CNN Turk said the bombs exploded shortly before 1 a.m.