Blood and blind panic: eye-witness accounts of Istanbul airport carnage

Witnesses relive the horror of the gun and bomb attack on Istanbul airport

People at Ataturk airport in Istanbul, on June 28, 2016, after it was hit by two explosions followed by gunfire. Ozan Kose/ Agence France-Presse

ISTANBUL // Some were going home, some were coming home to be met by loved ones. Then came the crack of gunfire and there was no more excitement, only panic.

Gunmen rampaged through Istanbul airport, spraying the hall with death while suicide bombers unleashed further devastation. Forty-one people are confirmed dead with dozens more wounded in what was one of the worst terrorist atrocities on Turkish soil. At least 23 of the dead were Turkish nationals, while 13 were foreigners — among them newly-weds Steven Nabil, an Iraqi journalist based in New York and his wife. The couple were returning from honeymoon when they were caught up in the attack. Mr Nabil had left his wife in a cafe while he went to buy food on a different floor. He recorded their ordeal on Twitter.

“Heard shots, ran fast toward her,” he wrote. “Came down the stairs to see the court empty and the terrorist firing toward us. We then took cover in a wardrobe inside a hair salon. The next 45 minutes we were sitting ducks waiting to find out who will open the door. When the bullets were close I hugged and kissed her.”

South African university administrator Judy Favish was checking in on her way home from Ireland. As others scattered, she instead huddled under the counter along with ground staff.

“After about ten minutes someone told us we had to move and we were ushered, running, down to the basement,” she recalled. “A couple of people who had been injured were with us and they were still bleeding and very shaken. A couple of people had major panic attacks downstairs. We were there for about two hours and then they said we could go and ushered us out. We walked through the airport and saw debris and blood. It was just chaos. It was horrible.”

Footage showed a black-clad gunman blowing himself up after he was brought down, apparently by a police marksman’s shot. Security cameras captured passengers scattering desperately as a huge ball of flame erupted at one of the airport entrances on Tuesday evening. Abandoned luggage sprinkled with shards of shattered glass was strewn across the blood-splattered floor.

Otfah Mohamed Abdullah was checking her luggage in when she saw one of the attackers pull out a hidden gun and begin shooting. Her sister began running and became separated from her. “ She was running and I was falling down. I was on the ground until he finished. I still can’t find my sister and I don’t have anything. Everything I have is inside [the airport],” said Ms Abdullah.

As the horror unfolded, some recorded it on smartphones or on social media. Survivors later said social media had been their only source of information during their ordeal. Latvian businessman Rihards Kalnins said, “There was just panic about what was going on. There was no order, there was just panic, people were running and screaming. At first I thought it was a fight but then people started saying there was an explosion, there was gunfire. For the next few hours, the only way to find out what was going on was through social media. Literally while we were hiding out a couple of hundred metres away around the corner, and some local guy was showing us video footage on his phone of what was going on 200 metres away. It was surreal.”

The attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk airport was the worst this year on the city. Not counted among the victims are the three suicide bombers. They arrived in a taxi and none made it through the airport security checks. Accounts of what followed differ. According to one report, two of the bombers detonated their explosives in the international arrivals terminal and a third in the car park. Another report states one of the gunmen blew himself up at the exit after being shot as he ran amid fleeing passengers while another detonated his bomb n the upper departures level after he was shot be police.

But one thing the Turkish authorities are agreed on is that ISIL extremists are almost certainly to blame, although prime minister Binali Yidirim said investigations were continuing.

Turkey’s long and easily-breached border with Syria and Iraq — both at war with a high ISIL presence — have left the country exposed to terrorism. Last January, a dozen German tourists were killed while visiting Istanbul’s historic sites. In March, a suicide bomber killed five people in Istanbul’s main pedestrian street and two suicide bombings killed 102 t a peace rally outside the main station in Ankara. The authorities blamed ISIL or affiliated groups for both.

Last October, twin suicide bombings hit a peace rally outside Ankara’s train station, killing 102 people. There was no claim of responsibility but Turkish authorities blamed the attack on a local Islamic State cell

As well as ISIL, Turkey has long battled with threats from within, and the prime minister suggested the attack could be linked to Turkey’s success against Kurdish rebels.

But stepping up controls at airports and land borders, as well as deporting thousands of foreign fighters has failed to contain the danger and the increasing frequency and scale of such attacks have had a devastating effect on the Turkish economy with its heavy reliance on tourism. On Jan. 12, an attack that Turkish authorities blamed on IS claimed the lives of a dozen German tourists visiting Istanbul’s historic sites. On March 19, a suicide bombing rocked Istanbul’s main pedestrian street, killing five people, including the bomber, whom the authorities identified as a Turkish national linked to IS.

Last October, twin suicide bombings hit a peace rally outside Ankara’s train station, killing 102 people. There was no claim of responsibility but Turkish authorities blamed the attack on a local Islamic State cell

As dawn broke over the destroyed terminal, workers began removing debris. An information board inside showed about one-third of scheduled flights were cancelled, and many more delayed. Hundreds of passengers who had fled the airport spent most of the night sitting on the grass outside as ambulances drove back and forth and anxious relatives and friends waited outside the city’s Bakirkoy Hospital for news. Official figures out the number of wounded at more than 230.

The prime minister called for national unity and “global cooperation” in combating terrorism. “This has shown once again that terrorism is a global threat,” said Mr Yildirim said. “This is a heinous planned attack that targeted innocent people.”

The appeal rang hollow for Serdar Tatlisu, waiting for news of his relative. “We cannot cope anymore, we can’t just stay still, “ he said. “We need some kind of solution for whatever problem there is.”

* Associated Press

* Agence France-Presse