The three suicide bombers who attacked Istanbul airport were a Russian, an Uzbek and a Kyrgyz, a senior Turkish official said Thursday, hours after police carried out sweeping raids across the city looking for Islamic State suspects.
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The official said “extensive soft-tissue” damage had complicated efforts to identify the attackers.
Preliminary findings suggest all three attackers opened fire and then detonated explosives strapped to their bodies, similar to the mass shooting and suicide bombings at Paris’ Bataclan concert hall in November.
Turkish police said they have detained 13 people, including three foreign nationals, in connection with the attack, local media reported.
A relative of Habibullah Sefer, one of the victims killed Tuesday at the blasts in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, weeps next to his coffin, during the funeral in Istanbul, Thursday, June 30, 2016.
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, told CNN that Akhmed Chatayev directed Tuesday night’s attack at Ataturk Airport, one of the world’s busiest, which also wounded more than 230.
Forensics teams had been struggling to identify the bombers from their limited remains, officials said earlier.
Interior Minister Efkan Ala told reporters late Wednesday there was an ongoing “serious and comprehensive investigation” into who was behind the attack.
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.
Meanwhile, Turkish President, Recep Erdogan, has vowed to fight against all terrorist organisations at all costs until the end of terrorism.
He referred to the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the Syrian Kurdish militia YPG and the Islamic State group.
Anadolu Agency said police searched residences in Istanbul’s Pendik, Basaksehir and Sultanbeyli neighborhoods but it was not clear if any arrests were made.
But Turkish officials, in Brussels for further talks on their country’s decades-long bid to join the European Union, also argued that the bloc needed Turkey, with its economic and geopolitical weight, more than ever after Britain’s vote last week to leave. IS has repeatedly threatened Turkey in its propaganda, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member has blamed IS for several major bombings in the past year in both Ankara and Istanbul.
Turkish authorities have banned distribution of images relating to the Ataturk airport attack within Turkey. The assailants raised the suspicion of airport security on the day of the attack because they showed up in winter jackets on a summer day, several media reported. It has claimed responsibility for similar bomb and gun attacks in Belgium and France in the past year.
Turkey, a key partner in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group, also faces security threats from Kurdish rebels who are demanding greater autonomy in Turkey’s southeast region and from ultra-left radicals.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations.
The raids against suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) cells were launched in Istanbul and the Aegean coastal city of Izmir.
An official said Friday that security forces have killed the mastermind of the February 17 attack.
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It said they were accused of financing, recruiting and providing logistical support to the group.
