The police raided the apartment after the attack, according to an upstairs neighbour, who said the men kept the curtains closed.
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The reported incident comes days after suspected IS militants attacked Istanbul’s busiest airport with gunfire and bombs Tuesday, killing 42 people and wounding more than 230 others.
It said they were accused of financing, recruiting and providing logistical support to the group.
“I hope that the Ataturk Airport attack, especially in Western countries [and] all over the world, will be a milestone for the joint fight against terrorist organizations, a turning point”, he said.
Turkey has cracked down on IS sleeper cells at home after a string of deadly attacks blamed on the jihadists, who have seized swathes of land in Iraq and Syria, right up to the Turkish border.
While Turkey has been the victim of ISIS attacks in the past – including one that killed 95 civilians at an Ankara peace rally in October – the USA and Turkey have not always seen eye-to-eye on the counter-ISIS campaign.
“Earlier today, the police raided 16 locations to detain 13 ISIS suspects, including three foreign nationals”, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because government regulations did not authorize him to talk to the media, said the attackers were from Russian Federation and the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Video footage from inside the terminal showed the horrific scenes unfolding as people ran for their lives, and a bright orange flash as one device detonated in an explosion.
“It was chaos. No one was in charge”, said Faisal Rashid, a 15-year-old who was traveling with his family from Sweden to Iraq, where they are originally from. “We know that we can die here or when we cross the street”.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of people picked up on the fact that Turkey did take part in the tournament, even though they were knocked out in the group stage.
The airport handles more than 60 million passengers each year and is a hub for Turkey’s official carrier, Turkish Airlines.
It said 20 people were still in intensive care.
The death toll from the attack has now risen to 43. “It is clear that this was Daesh … their place is in hell”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on July 1.
Perhaps not by chance, what was merely the latest in a series of Islamic State attacks inside Turkey came just as its impulsive and increasingly autocratic president was moving to fix his regime’s threadbare foreign relations.
While Turkey has conducted some air and artillery strikes against ISIS fighters along the Syria-Turkish border, the bulk of its strikes have been directed against Kurdish groups.
Who is behind Istanbul’s airport bombing? He also announced that his government would allow Syrian refugees in Turkey to take on Turkish citizenship. Turkey’s ethnic Kurdish minority has long sought greater independence from the Turkish state, and the rise of a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria worries nationalist Turks, who fear it will inspire the Kurds in Turkey.
Vadinov reportedly crossed into Turkey from Raqa in Syria, the stronghold of the Islamic State group which authorities believe was likely behind the attack. A Turkey that is less at odds with fellow enemies of the Islamic State will increase the pressure on the terrorists; the horror in Istanbul merely underlines the need for that.
Now, the two sides are edging toward full-fledged conflict, analysts say.
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Workers replaced ceiling panels, clean-up crews swept up debris, and water trucks washed pavements outside, but blood stains and shattered windows were still visible as the departure halls filled again and armed police roamed in kevlar vests.
