ISTANBUL: Three suspected the militant Islamic State (IS) group suicide bombers who killed 44 people in a gun and bomb attack at Istanbul's main airport this week were Russian, Uzbek and Kyrgyz nationals, a Turkish government official said on Thursday.
..............
The three bombers opened fire to create panic outside, before two of them got inside the terminal building and blew themselves up. The third detonated his explosives at the entrance. A further 238 people were wounded.............
Interior Minister Efkan Ala told parliament that evidence continued to point to IS responsibility
and that 19 of the dead were foreigners. Ala said the identity and nationality of one of the bombers had been determined but did not comment further.
The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper said
the Russian bomber was from Dagestan, which borders Chechnya, where Moscow has led two wars against separatists and religious militants since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper named him as Osman Vadinov and said he had come from Raqqa, the heart of Islamic State-controlled territory in Syria. The Russian interior ministry said it was checking information about Vadinov.
A spokesman for Kyrgyzstan's state security service said it was investigating, while the Uzbek security service had no immediate comment.
Thousands of foreign fighters from scores of countries have crossed Turkey to join IS in Syria and Iraq in recent years. Turkey has tightened security on the Syrian border but has long argued it needs more information from foreign intelligence agencies to intercept the fighters.
..............
Turkish police detained 13 people, four of them foreigners, in raids across Istanbul in connection with Tuesday night's attack. Broadcaster CNN Turk said they were accused of providing logistical support for the bombings.
Counter-terrorism teams led by police special forces launched simultaneous raids at 16 locations in the city, two officials told Reuters.
Yeni Safak said
the organiser of the attack was suspected to be a man called Akhmed Chatayev, of Chechen origin. Chatayev is identified on a United Nations sanctions list as a leader in IS responsible for training Russian-speaking militants, and as wanted by Russian authorities.
IS has claimed responsibility for similar bomb and gun attacks in Belgium and France in the past year.Critics say Turkey woke up too late to the threat from IS, focusing instead early in the Syrian civil war on trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad by backing even his hardline Islamist opponents, arguing there could be no peace without his departure.
Turkey's main opposition leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, angered by the ruling AK Party's refusal to hold an inquiry into the airport attack, accused the AKP of “an ideological kinship” with IS. Government officials have flatly rejected such accusations in the past.
.....Nine suspected militants, thought to have been in contact with IS members in Syria, were detained in dawn raids in four districts of the Aegean coastal city of Izmir on Thursday, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.....
well read more at that link...
Topic: Suicide bombers hit Istanbul international airport_ 45 killed