Multiple Palestinians were among the victims of Tuesday’s triple suicide bombings at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport, which left 36 dead and more than 140 injured, the ambassador of Palestine to Turkey said on Wednesday.
A Palestinian woman was killed and six others were injured in blasts at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport. including a 17-year-old girl from Gaza who is critically hurt. Ambassador Fayed Mustafa confirmed the death and injuries to Palestinian media Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.
The injured Palestinians included a baby girl and a teenage girl from Gaza who both remained in critical condition on Wednesday, he added.
The casualty has been identified as Nisreen Hashem Hadad from the West Bank province of Jenin. A Palestinian family working in Saudi Arabia and landing in Istanbul for vacation was injured during the attack.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that a number of Palestinians had been reported missing in the wake of the attack.
However, the ambassador abstained from naming the wounded, confirming that embassy officials had visited the injured Palestinians in the hospital, and planned to check on them routinely in coming days. Mustafa added that a crisis management team from the embassy had been following up with the Turkish Ministry of Health regarding the victims’ conditions.
The Turkish government would cover treatment expenses for all Palestinian victims, the ambassador added.
Mustafa denounced the attacks which “cruelly targeted civilians, including women and children.”
The Turkish Prime Minister Benali Yildirim said the number of casualties has gone up to 36, including the three attackers. Turkey-based Palestinian sources also said a three-year-old Palestinian child present in the blast scene has gone missing. Several other Palestinian families have reportedly sustained injuries in the attack. A woman from the al-Sherim family, in Qalqilya, is in critical condition. Her husband was also injured in the attack.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also condemned on Wednesday morning the “terrorist attacks” at Ataturk airport, which serves as Europe’s third-busiest airport in passenger traffic after London Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle, serving 61.3 million passengers in 2015.
For its part, Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, condemned the attack on Istanbul Ataturk Airport saying that it targets Turkey’s stability and attempts to hinder its achievements and prevent its support of the issues of the Muslim nation. In a press statement, Hamas’s spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri expressed his Movement’s solidarity with the Turkish people and leaders and offered condolences to the families of the victims wishing them speedy recovery.
Turkey has seen numerous gun and bomb attacks over the past two years, which have been blamed on both Islamic State militants and Kurdish separatists.
Istanbul, Turkey’s economic and tourist hub, has been the site of four major terror attacks since the beginning of 2016, with a death toll of 62.
Though no group has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack so far, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the Turkish government suspects it likely came from the Islamic State. If confirmed, this would be the terrorist group’s largest attack in Turkey to date.
