US authorities are preparing for more attacks, with New York and New Jersey police leading airport patrols, after three organized suicide bombings at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport on Tuesday. The onslaught, which was blamed on Islamic State terrorists, left several deaths and injuries.
According to Turkish authorities, three attackers opened fire against police officers at the entrance to the airport’s international and domestic terminals, and detonated suicide vests afterwards. As of last night, the number of death stood at 36, while 147 individuals were wounded. Airport officials said that the number of deaths is expected to increase.
“The terrorists came to the airport in a taxi and then carried out their attacks,” Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim stated. “The fact that they were carrying guns added to the toll. Preliminary findings suggest all three attackers first opened fire, then detonated themselves.”
The Islamic State was suspected to be behind the attack at the airport, as well as a metro station in Brussels last March. Both US and Turkish authorities told reporters that they also suspect the ISIS.
The Federal Aviation Administration stopped US flights to and from Turkey for several hours, while the State Department renewed a travel warning issued after a string of bombings that aimed at tourists in Istanbul.
While authorities in Massachussetts claim they were keeping current security levels, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is assigning additional police with tactical weapons to secure New York’s John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, as well as New Jersey’s Newark International Airport.
“There was blood on the ground,” one witness said. “Everything was blown up to bits. ... If we had arrived two minutes earlier, it could have been us.”
Two other tourists from Cape Town were at the airport and scheduled to go back home during the time of the explosions.
“We came up from the arrivals to the departures, up the escalator when we heard these shots going off,” one of the tourists narrated. “There was this guy going roaming around, he was dressed in black and he had a handgun.”
According to an intelligence chief, these kind of attacks have been the new normal for terrorists, as they modeled the assaults after the success of such undertakings in Brussels.
“If you get two or three attackers like this, and you can be successful on any airport in the world,” he said. “In essence, what you do is try to mitigate the initial attack. You have to make sure that your police response capability can neutralize this quickly. It’s containment. It’s limiting the body count.”
Turkey has endured various bombing events in the past few months, related to Kurdish or Islamic State terrorists. The attacks have been boosted in scale and frequency, hurting the country’s economy, which primarily depends on tourism revenue.
Impact of Istanbul Attack on Financial Markets
European stocks recovered on Wednesday, as investors took up equities after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union last week.
The Stoxx Europe 600 climbed 1.4 percent to 321.25, as all segments gained. The advance was led by telecommunication, oil and gas, as well as financial stocks. The index was heading toward a second consecutive session of gains.
However, some travel shares declined after the terrorist attack on Istanbul’s main airport, leaving at least 36 individuals dead. Travel services firm Tui AG NA (LON:TUIT) slipped 3.9 percent, trading at the bottom of Stoxx 600. Thomas Cook Group Plc (LON:TCG) dropped 2 percent, while British Airways parent International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (LON:ICAG) lost 1 percent.
On the other hand, the S&P 500 is down 0.1 percent for the week, while the NASDAQ Composite plunged 0.3 percent.