13 held for Istanbul airport attack

Turkish police have detained 13 people in connection with the triple suicide bombing at Istanbul's main airport.

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Istanbul - Turkish police have detained 13 people, including three foreigners, in connection with the triple suicide bombing at Istanbul's main airport which killed 42 people, a Turkish official said on Thursday.

Police conducted simultaneous raids on 16 places in Istanbul, the official told Reuters.

 

Turkish authorities and US officials believe Islamic State was responsible for Tuesday night's gun and bomb attack on Europe's third-busiest airport, the deadliest in a series of suicide bombings in Turkey this year.

 

Three bombers opened fire to create panic outside the Istanbul airport on Tuesday, before two of them got inside and blew themselves up. The third detonated his explosives at the entrance. Two hundred and thirty-nine people were wounded.

Turkey is part of a US-led military coalition against Islamic State and home to around 3 million refugees from the five-year civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Islamic State has established a self-declared caliphate on swathes of both Syria and Iraq and declared war on all non-Muslims and all Muslims who do not accept its ultra-hardline vision of Sunni Islam. It has claimed responsibility for similar bombing and gun attacks in Belgium and France in the past year.

Reuters