Death toll rises to 41 after suicide bombings at Ataturk Airport

Only three months after suicide bombers killed 35 people at Brussels Airport and Maalbeek metro station, a triple suicide bombing at Turkey’s Ataturk Airport in Istanbul on Tuesday evening has left 41 dead and nearly 240 injured. It is believed bombers arrived at the airport in a taxi that was not checked, and only once in the main airport complex were they challenged by police.
Having opened fire indiscriminately with Kalashnikov machine guns, the bombers then detonated their suicide vests, causing mass casualties and fatalities. While the attack bears all the hallmarks of another Islamic State (IS) attack as was the case in Brussels, no-one has yet claimed responsibility for the actions of the suicide bombers.
As a show of defiance, within two hours the airport was undergoing repairs and Turkish Airlines was fully operational within 12 hours of the attack. The airport is now fully operational. As the third-busiest airport in Europe (Turkey is in the process of negotiating to join the EU) Ataturk airport is responsible for handling 60 million passengers a year, of which 25 million come from the UK. This also makes the airport the 11th-busiest in the world.
Attaturk Airport was seen as a ‘soft target’ and it is known that IS has been targeting a number of locations in Turkey during Ramadan, part of the reason being the country’s desire to join the EU. In December last year a bomb exploded on the runway of Turkey’s second-largest airport, Sabiha Gokcen international airport, killing a female cleaner who had been working overnight on a plane, and damaging four aircraft.
Concerning the bombings at Ataturk, it is understood that the nationality of victims includes those from Turkey, France, Saudi Arabia, China, Jordan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Iran and the Ukraine.
Turkey’s president, Tayyip Erdogan, was very clear in a statement where he said the attack should serve as a turning point in the global fight against terrorism, which “no regard for faith or values,” adding “For terrorist organisations, there is no difference between Istanbul and London, Ankara and Berlin, Izmir and Chicago or Antalya,” in a later TV address.