One man worked as a Turkish translator and was escorting tourists back to the airport. One woman, an airport worker, was looking forward to her wedding in 10 days. There were taxi drivers and a customs officer. And there was a Turkish couple who worked together, and died together, in the suicide attack on Tuesday night at Istanbul Ataturk Airport that killed at least 41 people and wounded more than 200.
Details about the victims began trickling out on Wednesday. At least 23 of them were Turkish, according to a Turkish official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the record about the attack.The victims reflected the cosmopolitan and international character of Istanbul, whose airport is among the world’s busiest, a hub for tens of millions of passengers each year connecting to Europe, West Asia, Africa and beyond. Among the victims were five Saudis, two Iraqis and one citizen each from China, Iran, Jordan, Tunisia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, the Turkish official said.
Flights resume
Hours after the attack, a limited number of flights resumed and workers continued clearing debris and replacing shattered windows at the airport.Unlike in Brussels, where a terrorist attack in March closed the airport for days, Turkey appeared determined to get back to business as usual. On Wednesday morning, cars streamed into the airport’s international terminal, where the attack occurred.
But traces of the blasts lingered: Police tape marked off the area of one of the explosions. Workers in yellow vests pounded long support bars into the concrete sidewalk, erecting a 7-foot high metal fence dividing the road from the airport entrance.An elderly woman, who said she was a refugee from Afghanistan, sat on gravel in the shade, near a pile of her belongings, and watched them. Passengers making their way through the first airport security check point on Wednesday seemed shaken.
“It was only God’s grace that separated us from the tragedies that happened here,” said Tanika Golota (26), a school counsellor from Chicago, who was holding her 1-year-old, Mila. The Golotas, on their way home from a vacation in Portugal with a layover in Istanbul, had left the airport just 40 minutes before the explosion. “You see it on TV and you know it happens, but we are naive to the fact that it could happen to us,” she said.
Recent Random Post:
