A bike bomb exploded in a popular shopping district in central Istanbul on Thursday.

A bicycle bomb exploded in a popular shopping district in central Istanbul on Thursday, causing panic and wounding eight people, Turkish officials said.

The bomb, which the police said may have been detonated by a timing device, was attached to an electric bicycle parked next to a bus stop outside a busy upscale mall in the Etiler district of Istanbul, said the city’s governor, Huseyin Avni Mutlu.

The blast site is also very close to a local police training center, leading to speculation that it might have been the real target of the attack.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the blast, which seemed clearly aimed at civilians, Mr. Mutlu said in a televised statement.

Given the limited damage it caused, the bomb was not thought to be a large one, but forensic units continued to determine the technical specifics, officials stated.

The Etiler neighborhood is an upscale residential and business hub, with major connecting roads to business centers and offices, and is popular among bankers and several international companies. The neighborhood and nearby areas were struck by a series of Al Qaeda-linked bombings in 2003 that targeted international banks as well as synagogues and killed dozens of people.

Several militant groups have staged attacks in Istanbul in the past few decades, including the militant Kurdish separatist group P.K.K., or Kurdish Workers’ Party. That group was linked to an armed attack on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s campaign convoy traveling in the Black Sea region, killing one policeman in early May.