At least 41 people were killed in the Tuesday terror attack on Istanbul’s airport, including 13 foreigners who hailed from China, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and other countries, officials said.
Istanbul governor Vasip Sahin upped the death toll Wednesday after previously reporting that 36 people were killed in the coordinated bomb blasts at Ataturk airport.
A Turkish official said five travelers from Saudi Arabia and two from Iraq were killed in the terminal suicide bombings. One national each from China, Jordan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Iran and Ukraine are among the dead.
It’s not clear if the remaining 28 slain passengers all hailed from Turkey.
Another 239 people were injured in the blasts — up from 147 reported Tuesday — but more than 100 of the wounded have already been released from the hospital, Sahin said Wednesday.
No terror group has claimed responsibility for the Tuesday devastation, but Turkey’s prime minister said early indications suggested ISIS may be to blame. Islamic State leaders have harshly criticized the Turkish government for its alliance with the U.S., which had been leading a coalition against the extremist organization.
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.
The chaos erupted around 10 p.m. local time as gun-wielding attackers opened fire in front of the airport’s international arrivals terminal, near security’s X-ray machines. Police fired back — but the terrorists blew themselves up as they cut through the crowd, officials said.
Istanbul's Ataturk Airport attack is no surprise to Turks in N.Y.
Airport surveillance video posted on social media showed the moment of one blast, a huge ball of fire, and passengers fleeing in terror. Another appeared to show an attacker, felled by a gunshot from a security officer, blowing himself up seconds later.
A third suicide bomber blew himself up in the parking lot, police said.
Hevin Zini, 12, had just arrived from Duesseldorf, Germany, with her family when the chaos began.
“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.”
Massachusetts native Adam Keally survived the deadly blasts.
“People were shooting from one side and we all ran the other way and then the bombs went off and people started running the other way and there was more shooting and we came out,” he told CBS Boston.
As dawn broke over the destroyed terminal Wednesday, workers began removing debris left by the blast. The airport partially reopened, but an information board inside showed that about one-third of scheduled flights had been canceled, with a host of others delayed.
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.
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