Manama: The mother of the Saudi twins who were killed in the Istanbul attack has reportedly lost the ability to speak.
Nesreen Abu Zanada was traumatised by the loss of her twin sons Mohammad and Ahmad Al Fadhl and was taken to a doctor who said that she had not been able to resist the shock, her eldest son Amr said.
Amr who spoke following the funeral of his siblings said the family was looking forward to his mother recovering from the trauma, Saudi daily Okaz reported on Wednesday.
Seven Saudis — four women and three men — were killed and 13 — seven men and six women — were injured in the attack on the Reina nightclub and restaurant on New Year’s Eve.
The seven bodies were repatriated on Tuesday and Wednesday and in keeping with the local traditions, they were buried without delays in the graveyards of Makkah, Jeddah, and Madinah.
The Saudi consulate in Istanbul said that nine citizens left the hospital on Tuesday evening while the other four will leave within the next three days.
On social media, a debate whether the victims deserved religious prayers of forgiveness emerged after some accounts and blogs claimed that those who were killed were inside a nightclub and were publicly disobeying God’s orders about not sitting next to people who drank liquor and therefore, there should be no death prayers for mercy for them.
However, most accounts refuted the allegation, saying that it was not premised on facts and insisted that the victims were inside a restaurant and deserved all the prayers for mercy and blessings from God.
The users, including religious scholars and lawyers, argued that those who were not deterred from insulting or criticising innocent people by their own conscience should be made to face the long arm of the law.
The Turkish Consul-General in Jeddah quickly stepped in to clarify that Reina where the terror attack occurred was not just a nightclub as media have reported and that it also included restaurants.
“Reina is located in a beautiful area overlooking the Bosphorus in an amazing sight and it has two sections, one for the restaurants and the other for a nightclub,” Fikret Özer said.
Religious scholars warned against making wrongful insinuations or unjust hints.
“There is not the slightest doubt that the Muslims who were killed or wounded on that night deserved prayers for mercy,” Shaikh Saleh Bin Awwad Al Mghamsi, the imam of Quba Mosque in Madinah, said. “The fact that they were killed in a restaurant located near a nightclub does not justify their killing, validate negative insinuations about their morals or validate criticising them in any way. God is much more forgiving than parents are.”
Abdul Aziz Al Shabarmi, a lawyer and a former judge, said that the families of the victims could legally sue those who insulted them or questioned their morals on social media.
He added that the online insults and insinuations were cybercrimes and judges can rule in such cases based on the type of distortion and insults and on their effects on the family and on its reputation.
In the capital Riyadh, Waleed Al Subai, the head of a travel agency and the tourism committee at the local chamber of commerce and industry, said that several travellers cancelled or postponed their trips to Turkey and preferred to wait.
“Following the attack, many people decided to put off their travel plans to Istanbul until another four weeks to coincide with the school holidays,” he said, quoted by Saudi daily Al Riyadh on Wednesday.
However, there was no change to the schedule of the two Saudi airlines operating from Saudi Arabia to Istanbul, he added.
Mustafa Ahmet, a Turkish travel agent, was quoted by the daily as saying that the impact on travel to Istanbul would be temporary.
“The effect of the painful terrorist attack would not be long as the government in Turkey is working on further securing the conditions for tourists from all over the world,” he said. “We expect the situation to be back to normal within two months with people feeling secure that such terrible incidents will not be repeated.”
