The number of deaths has risen to 36 and the number of injured close to 150, after three suicide bombers opened fire then blew themselves up in Istanbul’s main international airport on Tuesday.
One attacker opened fire in the
departures hall with an automatic rifle, sending passengers diving for
cover and trying to flee, before all three blew themselves up in or
around the arrivals hall a floor below, witnesses and officials said.
The attack on Europe’s third-busiest
airport is one of the deadliest in a series of suicide bombings in
Turkey, which is struggling to contain the spillover from neighbouring
Syria’s civil war and battling an insurgency by Kurdish militants in its
southeast.
Police fired shots to try to stop two of
the attackers just before they reached a security checkpoint at the
arrivals hall, but they detonated their explosives, a Turkish official
said.
“It became clear with this incident
again that terrorism is a global threat. This attack, targeting innocent
people is a vile, planned terrorist act,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters at the airport.
“There is initial evidence that each of
the three suicide bombers blew themselves up after opening fire,” he
said, adding that they had come to the airport by taxi and that
preliminary findings pointed to Islamic State responsibility.
The vast majority of those killed were Turkish nationals but foreigners were also among the dead, the official said.
“There was a huge explosion, extremely
loud. The roof came down. Inside the airport it is terrible, you can’t
recognise it, the damage is big,” said Ali Tekin, who was at the arrivals hall waiting for a guest when the attack took place.
A woman named Duygu,
who was at passport control having just arrived from Germany, said she
threw herself onto the floor with the sound of the explosion.
Several witnesses also reported hearing gunfire shortly before the attacks.
“Everyone started running away.
Everywhere was covered with blood and body parts. I saw bullet holes on
the doors,” she said outside the airport.
As at the time of filing this report, no
group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which started around
9:50 PM (1850 GMT).
The attack bore similarities to a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants at Brussels airport in March which killed about 28 people.
A coordinated attack also targeted a rush-hour metro train, killing a further 16 people in the Belgian capital.
Paul Roos, 77, described seeing one of the attackers “randomly shooting” in the departures hall.
“He was just firing at anyone coming in
front of him. He was wearing all black. His face was not masked. I was
50 metres away from him,” said Roos, a South African returning to Cape
Town with his wife after a holiday in southern Turkey.
“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
towards 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.”
President Tayyip Erdogan said the attack should serve as a turning point in the global fight against militant groups.
“The attack, which took place during the
holy month of Ramadan, shows that terrorism strikes with no regard for
faith and values,” he said in a statement.
“The bombs that exploded in Istanbul
today could have gone off at any airport in any city around the world,”
he said, urging all governments to join forces against terrorism.
Ataturk is Turkey’s largest airport and a major transport hub for travellers from around the world.
Turkey has suffered a spate of
bombings this year, including two suicide attacks in tourist areas of
Istanbul blamed on Islamic State, and two car bombings in the capital,
Ankara, which were claimed by a Kurdish militant group.
In the most recent attack, a car bomb ripped through a police bus in central Istanbul during the morning rush hour, killing 11 people and wounding 36 near the main tourist district, a major university and the mayor’s office.
Turkey, which is part of the U.S.-led
coalition against Islamic State, is also fighting Kurdish militants in
its largely Kurdish southeast.
Photo Credit: KINGSLEYGOOGLE
