He was on the spot when bombs went off at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport on June 28.
Advertisement
Dozens of anxious friends and relatives remain camped outside Istanbul’s Bakirkoy hospital, waiting for news. The United Nations said he directly commands 130 militants. In addition, a computer that had been destroyed was been found in a trash bin near the apartment where the suicide bombers were staying.
The attack was “extremely well planned with ISIS leadership involved”, the source said.
Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu reported that two of the three terrorists responsible for the attack are Rakim Bulgarov and Vadim Osmanov, who apparently followed orders from Chatayev.
In separate large-scale police operations, nine suspects believed to be linked to the IS group were also detained in the coastal city of Izmir. Russia’s Dagestan region – alleged home of the third attacker – has been caught up in clashes between Russian forces and Islamist fighters since the late 1990s.
Chechnya produced many fighters following the 1990s wars that pitted Russian forces against Chechen separatists. Broadcaster CNN Turk said they were accused of providing logistical support for the bombings.
IS has long recruited members from mainly Muslim parts of the former USSR, with Russian President Vladimir Putin putting the overall number at between 5000 and 7000 in October. “People from the former Soviet Union tend to be the most battle-hardened and willing to die”, he said.
Turkish officials on Thursday did not offer any details about how they determined the identifications of the attackers. Another appeared to show an attacker, felled by a gunshot from a security officer, blowing himself up seconds later.
The government has made no official statement on nationalities yet and no-one has said they carried out the attack on Tuesday evening.
The death toll in the triple suicide bombing and shooting attack has risen to at least 44, Turkish state-run media announced Thursday.
Investigators are carrying out DNA tests on the bombers’ remains, but if confirmed it would be the first attack on foreign targets by Chechen and central Asian jihadists on behalf of Isil. He said he was shocked the man was a suspect in the attacks.
“I hope the attack at the Ataturk airport will be a turning point in the world, and primarily for the Western states, for a joint struggle against terror organizations”, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who condemned the attack adding that it “revealed the dark face of terror organizations targeting innocent civilians”.
A spokesman for Kyrgyzstan’s state security service said it was investigating, while the Uzbek security service had no immediate comment.
Like the attack in Brussels, the terrorists took a taxi to the airport. “So in a sense, the ultimate Kamikaze warrior”, said Weiss. The prime minister has said the attackers arrived with automatic rifles hidden in suitcases and shot their way inside.
Efforts by Turkey to press Daesh in Syria and Iraq may have triggered a terror attack by group on the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, various experts in Washington told Anadolu Agency.
An airport employee mourns his colleagues as he looks at the pictures of killed airport employees at the global terminal of the Istanbul Ataturk Airport, June 30, 2016.
Numerous victims killed in the attacks were foreign nationals of Saudi, Iraq, Tunisia, China, Iran, Ukrain, Jordan and Uzbekistan.
The Turkish military also claims to have killed at least 230 terrorists in northern Syria.
Advertisement
“I hope that this terror attack becomes a milestone for a common fight against terrorism, without any double standards or “your terrorist is bad; my terrorist is good” rhetoric”, Yildirim said.
