Blast kills one at Istanbul airport,
investigation launched
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[December 23, 2015]
By Daren Butler
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - An overnight
explosion at an airport in Istanbul killed one person and damaged three
planes hundreds of meters apart, Turkish media said, triggering a
security alert as authorities sought to determine if a bomb was
responsible.
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The blast at Sabiha Gokcen, the city's second airport and located
on its Asian side, occurred shortly after 2:00 a.m. (midnight GMT),
local budget carrier Pegasus said, fatally wounding a cleaner on one
of its planes.
The airport's owner, Malaysia Airports, referred to more than one
explosion "at the tarmac area", adding that normal flight operations
had resumed by 0200 GMT.
Police declined comment, while the airport said investigations into
the cause of the blast were ongoing.
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Bomb attacks by Kurdish, leftist and Islamist militants are common
in Turkey. A three-decades-old conflict between the state and the
militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has flared up in the
country's mainly Kurdish southeast since the collapse of a ceasefire
in July.
No passengers were in the area at the time of the airport blast,
which the Dogan news agency caused damage to at least three planes
as far as 300 meters (330 yards) from each other.
A photo on Dogan's website showed a hole in one plane window. Video
footage showed investigators taking photos of a terminal building
wall, dozens of meters from the nearest planes.
Police armed with rifles and protective vests imposed tight security
at entrances to the airport, searching vehicles while a police
helicopter circled overhead, state-run Anadolu Agency said.
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According to its website, Sabiha Gokcen served around 26 million
passengers in the first 11 months of the year, less than half the
number at the main Ataturk airport on the European side of the city.
(Additional reporting by Bengaluru Newsroom; Writing by Daren
Butler; Editing by David Dolan and John Stonestreet)
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