Turkish authorities have blamed the attack on the Islamic State group, though the group has not claimed credit.
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Some critics have reportedly said the coordination between the various police departments and the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) was still insufficient, pointing to the fact that MIT had warned about a possible suicide bomb attack only weeks before the assault.
No person or group has admitted responsibility, however analysts and USA counter-terrorism experts agree both the target and method of the attack bear the hallmarks of ISIL.
Mehmet Sirin Kaya was killed in the town of Lice in the mainly Kurdish province of Diyarbakir, the official said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government protocol.
Earlier Thursday, nine suspects linked to the group, also known as ISIL or ISIS, were also arrested in large-scale police raids in the coastal city of Izmir, Anadolu reported.
A Turkish government official said there’s evidence the attackers came from Raqqa, the Syrian city and ISIS stronghold, and that ISIS leadership was involved in planning the attack.
The Turkish outlet did not identify the third attacker, CNN reported. Turkish authorities believe the Islamic State group was behind the carnage, and have identified the attackers as a Russian, an Uzbek and a Kyrgyz national.
“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”, Erdogan said.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called this attack a “turning point” for the world to fight against terrorism.
Days before the Istanbul attack, on June 25th, security forces killed two suspected Islamic State militants who were trying to cross the border illegally and ignored orders from security forces to stop, according to local media reports.
Turkey is part of a US-led military coalition against Islamic State and home to around three million refugees from the five-year civil war in neighboring Syria.
Three terrorists attacked the busy airport, and one of them opened fire on the outside of the airport while two of them made their way inside. “It is likely that at least one of them is a foreigner, but the investigation is still underway”, one of the officials said, declining to be named or to comment further because details of the investigation have not yet been released. Several digital documents were seized when the suspects were detained, the governor’s office said.
“It was an airport”, one man could be heard shouting outside an Istanbul morgue on Wednesday, as devastated families went to collect the bodies of loved ones.
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Tuesday’s attack is the fifth in Turkey to be pinned on the Islamic State since last July, she notes.
