Istanbul airport attackers were Russian, Uzbek and Kyrgyz, official says

The three suicide bombers whocarried out adeadlyattack on Istanbul's main airport were of Russian, Uzbek and Kyrgyz nationality, a Turkishofficial said on Thursday.

Police detained 13 people, three of them foreigners, inraids across Istanbul in connection with Tuesday's attack onEurope's third-busiest airport, the deadliest in a series ofsuicide bombings in Turkey this year.

Counter-terrorism teams led by police special forceslaunched simultaneous raids at 16 locations in the city, twoofficials told Reuters. Turkish authorities have said theybelieve the extremist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syriawas behind the airport attack.

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Meanwhile, the death toll from the attack climbed to 44on Thursday, according to Turkey's interior minister.

The pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper earlier said the bombers were from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Dagestan in southern Russia, without naming its sources. Dagestan borders Chechnya, where Moscow has led two wars against separatists and religious militants since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

The Kyrgyz security service declined to comment, while theUzbek security service could not immediately be reached.

Around the clock

Three bombers opened fire to create panic outside theairport in Tuesday's attack, before two of them got inside andblew themselves up. The third detonated his explosives at theentrance. A further 238people were wounded.

Yeni Safak said the organizer of the attack was suspected tobe a man called Akhmed Chatayev, of Chechen origin. Chatayev isidentified on a United Nations sanctions list as a leader inISIS responsible for training Russian-speakingmilitants, and as wanted by Russian authorities.

The Hurriyet newspaper named one of the attackers as OsmanVadinov, also Chechen, and said he had come from Raqqa, theheart of ISIS-controlled territory in Syria.

Turkish officials did not confirm to Reuters that eitherChatayev or Vadinov were part of the investigation.

Growing threats

Wars in neighbouring Syria and Iraq have fostered ahome-grown ISISnetwork blamed for a series of suicidebombings in Turkey, including two this year targeting foreigntourists in the heart of Istanbul.

ISIS has established a self-declared caliphate onswathes of both Syria and Iraq and declared war on allnon-Muslims plus Muslims who do not accept its ultra-hardlinevision of Sunni Islam. It has claimed responsibility for similarbomb and gun attacks in Belgium and France in the past year.

Turkey, a member of the NATO military alliance and part ofthe U.S.-led coalition against ISIS, has repeatedlyfired back on the Sunni hardliners in recent months after rocketfire from northern Syria hit the border town of Kilis.

In a sign of the growing threats to Turkey, U.S. defencesources said on Wednesday that Washington was moving towardspermanently banning families from accompanying U.S. military andcivilian personnel deployed in the country.

Critics say Turkey woke up too late to the threat fromISIS, focusing instead in the early part of the Syriancivil war on trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad, arguingthere could be no peace without his departure.

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Once a reluctant partner in the fight against ISIS,Ankara adjusted its military rules of engagement this month toallow NATO allies to carry out more patrol flights along itsborder with Syria.

It has also carried out repeated raids on suspected ISISsafe houses in Turkey.

Nine suspected militants, thought to have been in contactwith ISIS members in Syria, were detained in dawn raidsin four districts of the Aegean coastal city of Izmir onThursday, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

It said they were accused of financing, recruiting andproviding logistical support to the group.

The military killed two suspected ISIS memberstrying to enter Turkey illegally at the weekend, securitysources said on Thursday.

One of the suspects, a Syrian national, was thought to havebeen plotting a suicide bomb attack in either the capital Ankaraor the southern province of Adana, home to Incirlik, a majorbase used by U.S. and Turkish forces through which somecoalition air strikes against ISIS are carried out.

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