Istanbul airport suicide attack leaves multiple dead, injured

ISTANBUL - Three suicide bombers opened fire then blew themselves up in Istanbul's main international airport on Tuesday, killing 36 people and wounding close to 150 in what Turkey's prime minister said appeared to have been an attack by Islamic State militants.

One attacker opened fire in the departures hall with an automatic rifle, sending passengers diving for cover and trying to flee, before all three blew themselves up in or around the arrivals hall a floor below, witnesses and officials said.

The attack on Europe's third-busiest airport was one of the deadliest in a series of suicide bombings in Turkey, which is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State and is struggling to contain the spillover from neighbouring Syria's civil war. It is also battling an insurgency by Kurdish militants in its largely Kurdish southeast.

Police fired shots to try to stop two of the attackers just before they reached a security checkpoint at the arrivals hall, but they detonated their explosives, a Turkish official said.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said: "This attack, targeting innocent people is a vile, planned terrorist act."

"There is initial evidence that each of the three suicide bombers blew themselves up after opening fire," he told reporters at the airport. Yildirim said the attackers had come to the airport by taxi and that preliminary findings pointed to Islamic State responsibility.

Two U.S. counterterrorism officials familiar with the early stages of investigations said Islamic State was at the top of the list of suspects even though there was no evidence yet.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the use of suicide bombers against "soft" targets was more typical of Islamic State than the other obvious suspect, Kurdish PKK militants, who generally attack official government targets.

One of the officials also said that, while Islamic State had recently stepped up attacks in Turkey, the group rarely claims responsibility because Turkey remains one of the main corridors for its fighters travelling from Europe to Syria and Iraq.

No group had claimed responsibility more than nine hours after the attack, which started around 9:50 p.m. local time (1850 GMT).

The attack bore similarities to a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants at Brussels airport in March that killed 16 people. A coordinated attack also targeted a rush-hour metro train, killing a further 16 people in the Belgian capital.

"THE ROOF CAME DOWN"

Most those killed were Turkish nationals but foreigners were also among the dead, a Turkish official said.

Ali Tekin, who was at the arrivals hall waiting for a guest, said the roof came down after an "extremely loud" explosion. "Inside the airport it is terrible, you can't recognise it, the damage is big," Tekin said.

A woman named Duygu, who was at passport control after arriving from Germany, said she threw herself to the floor after the explosion. "Everyone started running away. Everywhere was covered with blood and body parts. I saw bullet holes on the doors," she said.

Paul Roos, 77, said he saw one of the attackers "randomly shooting" in the departures hall from about 50 metres (55 yards) away. "He was wearing all black. His face was not masked," said Roos, a South African on his way home after a holiday in southern Turkey.

"We ducked behind a counter but I stood up and watched him. Two explosions went off shortly after one another. By that time he had stopped shooting," Roos told Reuters.

"He turned around and started coming towards us. He was holding his gun inside his jacket. He looked around anxiously to see if anyone was going to stop him and then went down the escalator ... We heard some more gunfire and then another explosion, and then it was over."

President Tayyip Erdogan said the attack should serve as a turning point in the global fight against militant groups.

"The attack, which took place during the holy month of Ramadan, shows that terrorism strikes with no regard for faith and values," he said in a statement.

The United States said it stood in solidarity with Turkey, its NATO ally, and that such attacks would only reinforce their joint determination. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed the need to intensify global efforts to combat extremism.

FLIGHTS RESUME

Ataturk is Turkey's largest airport and a major transport hub for travellers from around the world. Pictures posted on social media from the site showed wounded people lying on the ground inside and outside the international terminal.

A helicopter buzzed overhead as police evacuated the building. Dozens of passengers walked back down access roads with their luggage, trying to hail cabs. The U.S. embassy urged U.S citizens to avoid the area.

Authorities halted the takeoff of scheduled flights from the airport and passengers were transferred to hotels. Some flights to the airport were diverted, an official said, although Yildirim said later air traffic had resumed.

In the United States, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey reacted to the explosions by putting armed, high-visibility patrols at the three main airports in the New York metropolitan region. The U.S. Federal Aviation authority also lifted an earlier order grounding U.S. flights to Ataturk.

Turkey has suffered a spate of bombings this year, including two suicide attacks in tourist areas of Istanbul blamed on Islamic State, and two car bombings in the capital, Ankara, which were claimed by a Kurdish militant group.

In the most recent attack, a car bomb ripped through a police bus in central Istanbul during the morning rush hour, killing 11 people and wounding 36 near the main tourist district, a major university and the mayor's office.

One person was killed on Dec. 23, 2015, when an explosion hit Istanbul's second airport, Sabiha Gokcen, located on the Asian side of the city. That attack was claimed by a Kurdish militant group.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Pakistan suicide attack kills 65 celebrating Easter in Lahore

LAHORE, Pakistan - At least 65 people were killed and hundreds injured, many of them children, when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a crowded park in the Pakistani city of Lahore where Christians were celebrating Easter Sunday.

Officials said the bomber had detonated the explosives packed with ball bearings near a children's playing area in the popular Gulshan-i-Iqbal park.

Witnesses said they could hear children screaming as people carried the injured in their arms, while frantic relatives searched for loved ones in nightmarish scenes at the park near the centre of the city of eight million.

Doctors described frenzied scenes at hospitals, with staff treating casualties on floors and in corridors, as officials tweeted calls for blood donations.

"It was a suicide attack. The bomber managed to enter the park and blew himself up near the kids' playing area where kids were on the swings," Lahore's top administration official Muhammad Usman told AFP.

Javed Ali, a 35-year-old resident who lives opposite the park, said the force of the blast had shattered his home's windows.

"After ten minutes I went outside. There was human flesh on the walls of our house. People were crying, I could hear ambulances.

"It was overcrowded because of Easter, there were a lot of Christians there. It was so crowded I told my family not to go."

Yousaf Masih, a father who was searching for his family, told AFP: "My kids came here (to the park). I was at home, I saw the news on TV, but my wife and children were here."

Witnesses said the wounded were first rushed to hospital in rickshaws and other vehicles before dozens of ambulances arrived on the scene.

Usman said the death toll had reached 65 people, with more than 50 children among the injured. A Lahore rescue official confirmed the toll and said the number of injured stood at 340.

The attack was the year's deadliest, with officials saying the toll was set to rise.

There was no official confirmation of who was behind the attack late Sunday.

- 'Cowardly, appalling' -

Sunday's blast was condemned by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who "expressed grief and sorrow over the sad demise of innocent lives," according to a statement by his office.

He was later phoned by his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi who said "the people of India stand with their Pakistani brethren in this hour of grief", according to state media.

The Vatican condemned the attack, calling it "fanatical violence against Christian minorities."

The United States meanwhile labelled the incident "cowardly" and "appalling", while Pakistan's Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai tweeted: "Pakistan and the world must unite. Every life is precious and must be respected and protected."

US presidential contender Donald Trump tweeted "Another radical Islamist attack, this time in Pakistan... I alone can solve."

A military spokesman described the blast as a "suicide attack", adding that intelligence agencies were chasing all leads. Lahore officials said the army had been called to the scene of the attack.

On social media Pakistanis were retweeting the call for blood donations, while Facebook activated its "Safety Check" for Lahore.

The government of Punjab province declared three days mourning.

Christians are a minority in the Muslim giant of around 200 million people, making up an estimated 1.6 percent of the population, and have long faced discrimination.

Attacks targeting children carry a special resonance in Pakistan, still scarred by its deadliest ever militant assault in which Taliban gunmen killed more than 150 people at a school in Peshawar in 2014, the majority of them students.

A military operation targeting insurgents was intensified after that attack, and in 2015 the number of people killed in militant assaults dropped to its lowest since the Pakistani Taliban were formed in 2007.

Lahore, capital of Punjab province, has been relatively peaceful in recent years.

But the insurgents have demonstrated a chilling ability to continue attacks on soft targets.

In January 2016 the Pakistani Taliban launched an assault on a university in Charsadda, near Peshawar, that left 21 dead and spurred a call to arm teachers as parents spoke of fears for their children.

- Chaos in capital -

Sunday's blast came as the army was also deployed on the streets of the capital Islamabad after thousands of protesters clashed with police in chaotic scenes, throwing stones and setting part of a Metro station on fire.

The demonstrators were supporters of Islamist assassin Mumtaz Qadri, who was hanged on February 29 for killing a Punjab governor over his call for blasphemy reform.

Analysts called the execution a "key moment" in Pakistan's long battle against religious extremism.

But it has also exposed deep religious divisions in the conservative country.

The protesters issued a list of demands calling for Qadri to be named a hero and the country's controversial blasphemy laws, which carry the death penalty, to be upheld.

A military spokesman said late Sunday that the army had been deployed to secure the Red Zone around Parliament as the protesters appeared to settle in for the night.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Brussels stays at top security alert over fears of Paris-style attack

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Brussels will remain at the highest possible alert level Monday, with schools, universities and metros closed over a "serious and imminent" threat of attacks similar to those that struck Paris, the Belgian prime minister said.

Belgian police said several operations were under way late Sunday as security forces continued to hunt for Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in last week's atrocities in the French capital.

Armed officers and troops have been patrolling the near deserted streets of the tense Belgian capital all weekend after the government raised the terror alert to the highest level of four in the city of more than a million that is also home to the NATO and European Union headquarters.

Premier Charles Michel said the metro system would remain shut and schools and universities would be closed over concerns that jihadists were planning a repeat of the Paris gun and suicide bombing attacks that claimed 130 lives on November 13.

"What we fear are similar attacks, with several individuals in several places," he told reporters.

"The threat is considered serious and imminent," he said, adding that the rest of the country would remain on security alert level three, meaning an attack is considered possible and the threat credible.

Officials will review the situation again on Monday.

The historic Grand Place in central Brussels, usually bustling, was virtually empty at the weekend, with business badly hit in the run-up to Christmas as anxious residents heeded warnings to stay home.

With a massive manhunt on for several suspects linked to the carnage in Paris, Belgian police urged the media not to show live footage of the police operations taking place Sunday evening.

The public prosecutor will hold a news conference "when it is all over", a spokesman told AFP.

Interior Minister Jan Jambon earlier said the authorities were looking for "several suspects" and not just for Abdeslam, who is thought to have slipped past French security forces after taking part in the Paris attacks, which were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.

French police meanwhile released a photo of the third of three men who blew themselves up outside France's national stadium during the rampage, which also targeted the Bataclan concert hall as well as a string of bars and restaurants.

The man in the picture passed through Greece with one of the other suicide bombers, carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Mohammad al-Mahmod, a source close to the investigation said.

- Obama: 'We're not afraid' -With the world on edge over the jihadist threat, US President Barack Obama said the most powerful tool in the fight against IS was to say "that we're not afraid".

He added that he would go ahead with a December visit to Paris for UN climate talks and called on other countries to show similar resolve.

French President Francois Hollande will embark on a diplomatic offensive in the coming days in a bid to forge a broad anti-IS coalition.

He will host Britain's David Cameron Monday before meeting Obama in Washington on Tuesday, holding talks with Germany's Angela Merkel in Paris Wednesday and Russia's Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday.

The UN Security Council on Friday authorised "all necessary measures" to fight jihadist violence after a wave of deadly attacks, including the downing of a Russian aircraft in Egypt with the loss of 224 lives and the storming of a luxury hotel in Mali that left 19 dead.

- Hollande 'shocked but focused' -German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who was at the stadium along with Hollande attending a France-Germany football friendly when the bombers blew themselves up outside, told the daily Bild he had thought the first blast was fireworks, but soon realised it was a terror attack.

Hollande "was shocked, but at the same time very focused and determined," he added.

The French leader was evacuated, but Steinmeier and his team were asked to stay in the hope of avoiding panic among the some 80,000 fans, he said.

Meanwhile, Eagles of Death Metal, the Californian band that was playing at the Bataclan where 89 people were massacred, spoke for the first time since the attacks, with singer Jesse Hughes saying that many fans died tyring to protect their friends.

"So many people put themselves in front of people," he said in an excerpt of an interview with Vice.com.

- The Belgian connection -The suspected ringleader of the November 13 attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, died in a massive police raid in Paris on Wednesday.

He was a notorious Belgian jihadist thought to be fighting in Syria, and his presence in Europe has raised troubling questions about a Europe-wide breakdown in intelligence and border security.

Questions remain too over the role played by Belgian-born Abdeslam -- who used to run a bar with his brother Brahim in Brussels.

Brahim blew himself up outside a Paris bar on November 13.

A third brother, Mohamed Abdeslam, told Belgian TV he believed Salah had at the last moment decided not go through with the attack.

He said the family wanted him to give himself up.

"That way he can give us the answers we seek, our family and the families of the victims," he said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com