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Istanbul airport explosion kills cleaner Istanbul airport explosion kills cleaner
(35 minutes later)
An explosion at Istanbul’s second largest airport has killed a cleaner on a plane and injured another, the Dogan news agency reported. Officials are investigating whether the blast was caused by a bomb. An overnight explosion at an airport in Istanbul killed one person and damaged three planes hundreds of metres apart, Turkish media said, triggering a security alert as authorities sought to determine if a bomb was responsible.
The budget carrier Pegasus said the explosion at Sabiha Gökçen airport on the Asian side of the city occurred at 2.05am, when no passengers were in the area. It said its operations at the airport were continuing normally. The blast at Sabiha Gokcen, the city’s second airport and located on its Asian side, occurred shortly after 2am, local budget carrier Pegasus said, fatally wounding a cleaner on one of its planes.
Police armed with rifles and protective vests imposed tight security at entrances to the airport after the blast, searching vehicles while a police helicopter circled overhead, the state-run Anadolu agency said. The airport’s owner, Malaysia Airports, referred to more than one explosion “at the tarmac area”, adding that normal flight operations had resumed by 4am.
Anadolu earlier reported that one of the cleaners suffered a head wound and the other a hand injury. Both were female. Police declined to comment, while the airport said investigations into the cause of the blast were ongoing.
The airport said investigations into the cause of the blast were ongoing, and air traffic was operating normally. 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 has flared up in the country’s mainly Kurdish south-east since the collapse of a ceasefire in July.
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 has flared up in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east 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 said caused damage to at least three planes as far as 300 metres from each other.
The airport served around 26 million passengers in the first 11 months of the year, according to its website, less than half the number at the main Ataturk airport on the European side of the city. 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 metres 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, the state-run Anadolu agency said.
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.