Turkey: 10 Killed, Many Injured in Istanbul Airport Attack

Zacheaus Somorin with agency reports

Two explosions at Turkey’s largest airport left at least 10 people dead and wounded some 20 others on Tuesday night, according to Turkish authorities and television reports.

The Turkish justice minister, Bekir Bozdag, said 10 people had been killed in an attack on Ataturk airport. He said that one attacker fired an automatic weapon before detonating explosives.

Another Turkish government official said that the police fired shots at two suspected attackers at the entryway to the airport’s international terminal, in an effort to stop them before they reached the building’s security checkpoint. The two suspects then blew themselves up, the official said.

CNN Turk reported that one suicide bomber detonated explosives inside the terminal building and another outside in a parking lot.

NTV reported that airport workers were streaming out of the building, crying. A witness told CNN Turk that injured people were being taken away in taxis, Reuters reported.

T24, an internet news site, showed photographs of people bending to help two people who were lying on the pavement just outside the airport.

Birgun, a Turkish newspaper, posted photographs of fallen tiles and shattered pieces of concrete near a line of cabs outside the airport.

Further details later