BISHKEK (TCA) — On June 30 Turkish media reported that one of the suicide bombers who attacked Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport this week was from Kyrgyzstan. The media reported the attack was conducted by citizens of Russia (Chechnya), Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Ministry late on June 30 said that Kyrgyz diplomats in Turkey had met with Istanbul security department officials that said the information reported by the media was premature and unconfirmed until the official announcement of results of DNA and other biological and chemical tests.
A Turkish official on June 30 said three suspected Islamic State (IS) suicide bombers who attacked Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport were from Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Authorities also announced the detention of 13 more people, including three foreign nationals, in connection with the June 28 gun-and-bomb attack that killed at least 43 people and injured more than 200 more, RFE/RL reported.
The attack on Europe’s third-busiest airport was the deadliest in a series of suicide bombings in Turkey this year, and the latest of more than a dozen major attacks in that country in the past 12 months.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Ankara has blamed the IS militant group.
To varying degrees, all three of those post-Soviet states are said to be sources of IS recruits who have traveled to fight in the Middle East, where the group has declared a “caliphate” in parts of conflict-torn Syria and Iraq.
Russian officials say thousands of its citizens have fled to join the IS military effort in Syria — representing as much as around 10 percent of IS’s foreign fighting force.
Kyrgyz authorities have reported thwarting a number of terrorist attacks in Kyrgyzstan that they said were planned by IS members.
