Attention in Istanbul bombing focused on Chechen extremist

Turkey says the three suicide bombers who carried out the deadly attack on the Istanbul airport were from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Anadolu said police conducted simultaneous raids at 16 locations in the city, Anadolu said.

When the attackers arrived at the Turkish airport armed with rifles and suicide bomb vests, two opened fire and detonated their bombs at the global terminal building, according to officials.

In 2012, Georgian officials said Chatayev had been wounded in a special forces operation against an unidentified group in the remote Lopota Gorge near the border with Dagestan.

The state-run Anadolu Agency reported Friday that the Bakirkoy Public Prosecutor’s office had established the identity of two suspects in the course of investigations.

Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member and key partner in the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group, also faces security threats from Kurdish rebels who are demanding greater autonomy in Turkey’s southeast region and from ultra-left radicals.

At least 44 people were killed in a triple suicide bombing at Istanbul’s global airport on Tuesday, with the government pointing the finger of blame at IS jihadists.

Interior Minister Efkan Ala, meanwhile, raised the latest official death toll to 43, including 19 foreign nationals, with 230 people injured.

Svante Cornell, Director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program, said the airport attack is an indication of how hard it will be for Turkey to clean up years of foreign policy failures.

The raids against suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) cells were launched in Istanbul and the Aegean coastal city of Izmir.

Turkish officials on Thursday did not offer any details about how they determined the identifications of the attackers. Turkish authorities have blamed the attack on the Islamic State group, though the group has not claimed credit.

Officials had previously said the three bombers were a Russian, an Uzbek and a Kyrgyz national. Many of those killed were not passengers but people who worked at the airport.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that between 5,000 and 7,000 people from Russia and other nations of the former Soviet Union have joined the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Hundreds of mourners also gathered in Istanbul on Thursday for the funeral of popular 28-year-old teacher Huseyin Tunc, who was at the airport welcoming a friend.

The man suspected of being the organiser of the attack was a Daesh commander of Chechen origin called Akhmed Chatayev, according to the pro-government newspaper, Yeni Safak.

There has yet to emerge a claim of responsibility for the attacks.

On June 25, Turkish security forces killed two suspected IS militants trying to cross the border illegally after they ignored orders to stop, local media reported.