36 Killed, 146 Injured in Alleged ISIS Attack on Turkey’s Atatürk Airport

nsnbc : A terrorist attack at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, Tuesday evening, claimed the lives of 36 while at least another 147 were injured. The attackers who used assault rifles and suicide belts got engaged in a shootout with security personnel. Early on Wednesday Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that it was likely that Islamic State was responsible for the attack.

Atatürk Airport_Istanbul_Turkey_Jun 2016Turkish officials report that a firefight ensued when two attackers opened fire on security personnel and on travelers at an X-ray checkpoint at Turkey’s largest airport. The investigation is ongoing, but so far the total number of attackers has been reported as three.

The assailants were reportedly armed with AK 47 rifles, a commodity that is cheap in Turkey, the main transit country for weapons and fighters for “rebels”, including Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) and other mercenary forces in Syria and Iraq.

Five of the 36 who were killed were reportedly police officers. All three attackers were killed. At least two of the three assailants finished their attack by exploding suicide belts. One eyewitness reports that one of the attackers exploded a suicide belt after he was shot and injured.

It is currently unknown how many were killed or injured by the by bullets from the attackers, the exploding suicide belts, or eventually by bullets fired by security personnel. Only a detailed forensic investigation can determine this ghastly “score” and Turkish authorities are notorious for not releasing independently testable evidence.

Alleged CCTV and private footage circulated in social media could not be independently  verified. The footage appears to show one the moment when one of the assailants was shot and injured by a security guard. After collapsing to the floor the armed assailant appears to have triggered an explosive device believed to have been a suicide belt. A second person approaching the alleged terrorist on the ground may also have thrown an explosive device to the injured man on the ground. The footage is not sufficiently clear to enable the viewer to determine what exactly had happened. The identity of the three assailants has not yet been released.

Wednesday morning Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim held a press conference at the airport. Yildirim told reporters that there are signs indicating that Tuesday night’s attacks were carried out by the IS, but that efforts to identify the attackers are still under way. The three assailants had reportedly arrived at the airport by taxi and opened fire before blowing themselves up, said the prime minister. Foreign nationals were among the dead, he said. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on all governments, especially in the west, to join forces in taking a “firm stand against terror”. Erdogan said:

“The bombs that exploded in Istanbul today could have gone off at any airport in any city around the world. Make no mistake: for terrorist organisations there is no difference between Istanbul and London, Ankara and Berlin, Izmir and Chicago or Antalya and Rome. … Unless all government and the entire mankind join forces in the fight against terrorism, much worse things than what we fear to imagine today will come true. … I hope that the Ataturk Airport attack, especially in Western countries [and] all over the world, will be a milestone for the joint fight against terrorist organizations, a turning point. … It is clear that this attack is not aimed at achieving any result but only to create propaganda material against our country using simply the blood and pain of innocent people.”

It may be noteworthy that the attack followed the recent normalization of Israeli – Turkish relations and a tentative rapprochement between Russia and Turkey. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, and eventual claims  will have to be scrutinized before one can determine their veracity. Neither the names of the 36 killed and 147 injured nor the names of the assailants have been made publicly available.

Turkey has been the main hub for the transit of weapons and fighters for the so-called Free Syrian Army, Jabhat Al-Nusrah, ISIS and other Islamist mercenary and “rebel” forces in Syria since 2011, and Turkey became the main hub for the same kind of traffic to Iraq after the invasion of Iraq by ISIS in 2014. nsnbc investigations showed that the final decision to invade Iraq with ISIS forces was made on the sidelines of the Atlantic Council’s Energy Summit in Turkey in November 2013.

CH/L & F/AK – nsnbc 29.06.2016

UPDATE: The office of the regional governor reported at 10:15 local time that the death toll has risen to 41 and that at least 239 have been injured. The victims reportedly included at least 10 foreign nationals and three people with dual citizenship. No nams have yet been released. It is common practice to inform the next of kin first.

Source Article from http://nsnbc.me/2016/06/29/36-killed-146-injured-in-alleged-isis-attack-on-turkeys-ataturk-airport/

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