Istanbul: The suicide attackers who launched the deadly Istanbul airport assault were planning to take dozens of passengers hostage, Turkish media reported Friday, as CCTV of the bombers’ faces emerged.
Turkish officials have pointed blame at Daesh terror group for Tuesday night’s gun and bomb spree at Ataturk airport, which left 44 people dead including 19 foreigners.
“They say they are doing this in the name of Islam,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on a visit to Istanbul.
“That has nothing to do with Islam. Their place is in hell.”
State-run news agency Anadolu said 24 people had been detained in Istanbul in a string of raids over the attack over the past two days, including 15 foreigners.
Nine other suspected terrorists were rounded up in the western port city of Izmir, but officials declined to confirm a link with the bloodshed in Istanbul.
On Friday, Turkish police detained 11 foreigners suspected of belonging to a Daesh cell linked to the attack on Istanbul’s main airport, state media reported, and attention turned to a suspected Chechen mastermind.
Officials say the three men who carried out the latest in a series of deadly attacks to hit Turkey were a Russian, an Uzbek and a Kyrgyz national.
Turkish media identified the strike’s organiser as Akhmet Chatayev, the Chechen leader of an Daesh cell in Istanbul who reportedly found accommodation for the bombers.
Chatayev allegedly organised two deadly bombings this year in the heart of the city’s Sultanahmet tourist district and the busy Istiklal shopping street, the Hurriyet newspaper said.
Chatayev is identified on a United Nations sanctions list as a leader in Daesh responsible for training Russian-speaking militants.
He was arrested in Bulgaria five years ago on a Russian extradition request but freed because he had refugee status in Austria, a Bulgarian judge said. A year later he was wounded and captured in Georgia but again released.
Friday’s dawn arrests by counterterror police in the European side of Istanbul brought to 24 the number of people detained in the investigation, state-run Anadolu Agency said. A police spokesman could not confirm the report.
Turkish officials have not given many details beyond confirming the attackers’ nationalities. They have previously said forensic teams were struggling to identify the suicide bombers from their limited remains.
Michael McCaul, chairman of the US House Committee on Homeland Security, described Chatayev as “probably the number one enemy in the Northern Caucasus region of Russia”.
“He’s travelled to Syria on many occasions and became one of the top lieutenants for the minister of war for Daesh operations,” McCaul told CNN.
The pro-government Sabah newspaper reported that the attackers scouted the scene and planned to take dozens of passengers hostage inside before carrying out a massacre.
But they began the assault early after attracting suspicion, Sabah said.
CCTV images released by police show the three alleged attackers arriving, wearing dark coats over their suicide vests — clothing that was much too heavy for a hot summer night.
More images show a plainclothes police officer confronting one of the men by an elevator and asking to see his identification. The attacker pulls out a gun and shoots him.
Turkey has been rocked by a series of attacks in the past year blamed on either Daesh terrorists or Kurdish rebels.
The latest assault sparked global condemnation, with consuls from a dozen countries around Europe and beyond gathering at the airport Friday to lay flowers in memory of the victims.
Hundreds of mourners also gathered in Istanbul on Thursday for the funeral of popular 28-year-old teacher Huseyin Tunc, who was at the airport to welcome a friend.
“We still can’t believe it,” one of his pupils, Batuhan Karabey, said.
“He was more than a teacher to us — he was like a big brother, helping us a lot. Really, I can’t believe it’s true.”
The Hurriyet newspaper reported that the bombers had rented a flat in Istanbul’s Fatih district, home to many Syrians and other Arabs, and paid 24,000 Turkish lira (Dh30,485; $8,300, 7,500 euros) in advance for a year’s rent.
The police raided the apartment after the attack, according to an upstairs neighbour, who said the men kept the curtains closed.
She never saw the attackers, but she heard them, and complained to neighbourhood officials about a strange smell.
“A very weird, chemical smell,” she told Hurriyet.
“Police came after the bombing ... I lived on top of the bomb.”
Hurriyet also quoted a local plumber, identified only by his initials E.S., who says one of the attackers came to his shop to ask if he could fix their tap.
“He spoke in broken Turkish. He took me home,” the plumber said.
“I changed the tap. I saw three people inside. They looked like bandits — one of them always stood by me.”
