Istanbul airport attack: ‘Everything was blown up to bits’, witness says
ISTANBUL: Suicide attackers killed dozens and wounded more than 140 at Istanbul’s busy Ataturk Airport, as Turkish officials blamed Tuesday’s massacre at the international terminal on three suspected Islamic State group militants.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 36 were dead as well as the three suicide bombers. Justice minister Bekir Bozdag said 147 were wounded.
Another senior government official said the death toll could climb much higher. The senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government protocol, at first said close to 50 people had already died, but later said that the figure was expected to rise to close to 50.
Hundreds of frightened passengers streamed out of the airport, fleeing the latest of several bombings to strike Turkey in recent months. The attacks on a key partner in the US-led coalition against IS and a NATO member have increased in scale and frequency. They have scared off tourists and hurt the Turkish economy, which relies heavily on tourism.
Hevin Zini, 12, had just arrived from Duesseldorf, Germany, with her family and was in tears from the shock.
“There was blood on the ground,” she told the Associated Press. “Everything was blown up to bits… if we had arrived two minutes earlier, it could have been us.”
Attacker ‘randomly opened fire’
One of the attackers in a multiple suicide bombing at Istanbul’s main international airport on Tuesday “randomly opened fire” as he walked through the terminal building, shortly before three explosions, an eyewitness told Reuters.
“We came right to international departures and saw the man randomly shooting. He was just firing at anyone coming in front of him. He was wearing all black. His face was not masked. I was 50 meters away from him,” said Paul Roos, 77, a South African tourist on his way back to Cape Town with his wife.
“We ducked behind a counter but I stood up and watched him. Two explosions went off shortly after one another. By that time he had stopped shooting,” Roos told Reuters.
“He turned around and started coming toward us. He was holding his gun inside his jacket. He looked around anxiously to see if anyone was going to stop him and then went down the escalator … We heard some more gunfire and then another explosion, and then it was over.”
‘Islamic State behind attacks’
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, speaking to reporters at the airport, said all initial indications suggested the Islamic State group was behind the attacks.
“The findings of our security forces point at the Daesh organization as the perpetrators of this terror attack,” Yildirim said, using the Arabic name for IS. “Even though the indications suggest Daesh, our investigations are continuing.”
Turkey shares long, porous borders with Syria and Iraq, war-torn countries where IS controls large pockets of territory. Authorities have blamed IS for several major bombings over the past year, including on the capital Ankara, as well as attacks on tourists in Istanbul.
Turkey has stepped up controls at airports and land borders and deported thousands of foreign fighters, but has struggled to tackle the threat of IS militants while also conducting vast security operations against Kurdish rebels, who have also been blamed for recent deadly attacks.
The devastation at Istanbul’s airport follows the March attack on Brussels Airport, where two suicide bombings ripped through check-in counters, killing 16 people. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack, as well as a subsequent explosion at a Brussels subway station that killed 16 more people.
Yildirim said air traffic at Ataturk Airport, which was suspended after the attack, had resumed to normal early Wednesday. A stoppage of flights to and from the United States and Istanbul lasted several hours but was later lifted, said a US official who spoke on background to discuss sensitive security issues.
Yildirim said the attackers arrived at the airport in a taxi and blew themselves up after opening fire. Asked whether a fourth attacker might have escaped, he said authorities have no such assessment but are considering every possibility.
Another Turkish official said two of the attackers detonated explosives at the entrance of the international arrivals terminal after police fired at them, while the third blew himself up in the parking lot.
The official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations, cited interior ministry information and said that none of the attackers managed to get past security checks at the terminal’s entrance.
Turkish airports have security checks at both the entrance of terminal buildings and then later before entry to departure gates.
Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport was the 11th busiest airport in the world last year, with 61.8 million passengers, according to Airports Council International. It is also one of the fastest-growing airports in the world, seeing 9.2 percent more passengers last year than in 2014.
The largest carrier at the airport is Turkish Airlines, which operates a major hub there. Low-cost Turkish carrier Onur Air is the second-largest airline there.
The independent Dogan news agency reported that a plane carrying Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama was arriving on an official visit at the airport when the attack occurred. The prime minister and his entourage were safely taken to an official residence.
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