Tag: airport
Islamic State Prime Suspect After Suicide Bombers Kill 41 At Istanbul Airport

Islamic State Prime Suspect After Suicide Bombers Kill 41 At Istanbul Airport

Turkish investigators pored over video footage and witness statements on Wednesday after three suspected Islamic State suicide bombers opened fire and blew themselves up in Istanbul’s main airport, killing 41 people and wounding 239.

The attack on Europe’s third-busiest airport was the deadliest in a series of suicide bombings this year in Turkey, part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State and struggling to contain spillover from neighboring Syria’s war.

President Tayyip Erdogan said the attack should serve as a turning point in the global fight against terrorism, which he said had “no regard for faith or values”.

Five Saudis and two Iraqis were among the dead, a Turkish official said. Citizens from China, Jordan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Iran and Ukraine were also among the 13 foreigners killed.

One attacker opened fire in the departures hall with an automatic rifle, sending passengers diving for cover and trying to flee, before all three blew themselves up in or around the arrivals hall a floor below, witnesses and officials said.

Video footage showed one of the attackers inside the terminal building being shot, apparently by a police officer, before falling to the ground as people scattered. The attacker then blew himself up around 20 seconds later.

“It’s a jigsaw puzzle … The authorities are going through CCTV footage, witness statements,” a Turkish official said.

The Dogan news agency said autopsies on the three bombers, whose torsos were ripped apart, had been completed and that they may have been foreign nationals, without citing its sources.

Broken ceiling panels littered the kerb outside the arrivals section of the international terminal. Plates of glass had shattered, exposing the inside of the building, and electric cables dangled from the ceiling. Cleanup crews swept up debris and armed police patrolled as flights resumed.

“This attack, targeting innocent people is a vile, planned terrorist act,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters at the scene in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“There is initial evidence that each of the three suicide bombers blew themselves up after opening fire,” he said. The attackers had come to the airport by taxi and preliminary findings pointed to Islamic State responsibility.

Two U.S. counterterrorism officials familiar with the early stages of investigations said Islamic State was at the top of the list of suspects even though there was no evidence yet.

No group had claimed responsibility more than 12 hours after the attack, which began around 9:50 p.m. (1850 GMT) on Tuesday.

 

VICTIMS OF MANY NATIONALITIES

Istanbul’s position bridging Europe and Asia has made Ataturk airport, Turkey’s largest, a major transit hub for passengers across the world. The Istanbul governor’s office said 109 of the 239 people hospitalized had since been discharged.

“There were little babies crying, people shouting, broken glass and blood all over the floor. It was very crowded, there was chaos. It was traumatic,” said Diana Eltner, 29, a Swiss psychologist who was traveling from Zurich to Vietnam but had been diverted to Istanbul after she missed a connection.

Delayed travelers were sleeping on floors at the airport, a Reuters witness said, as some passengers and airport staff cried and hugged each other. Police in kevlar vests with automatic weapons prowled the kerbside as a handful of travelers and Turkish Airlines crew trickled in.

The national carrier said it had canceled 340 flights although its departures resumed after 8:00 am (0500 GMT).

Paul Roos, 77, a South African tourist on his way home, said he saw one of the attackers “randomly shooting” in the departures hall from about 50 meters (55 yards) away.

“He was wearing all black. His face was not masked … We ducked behind a counter but I stood up and watched him. Two explosions went off shortly after one another. By that time he had stopped shooting,” Roos told Reuters.

“He turned around and started coming towards us. He was holding his gun inside his jacket. He looked around anxiously to see if anyone was going to stop him and then went down the escalator … We heard some more gunfire and then another explosion, and then it was over.”

 

AIM TO MAXIMIZE FEAR

The attack bore similarities to a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants at Brussels airport in March that killed 16 people. A coordinated attack also targeted a rush-hour metro train, killing a further 16 people in the Belgian capital.

Islamic State militants also claimed gun and bomb attacks that killed 129 people in Paris last November

“In Istanbul they used a combination of the methods employed in Paris and Brussels. They planned a murder that would maximize fear and loss of life,” said Suleyman Ozeren, a terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Global Policy and Strategy Institute.

Turkey needs to work harder on “preventative intelligence” to stop militants being radicalized in the first place, he said.

The two U.S. officials said the Istanbul bombing was more typical of Islamic State than of Kurdish militant groups which have also carried out recent attacks in Turkey, but usually strike at official government targets.

Yildirim said it was significant that the attack took place when Turkey was having successes in fighting terrorist groups and mending ties with some of its international partners.

Turkey announced the restoration of diplomatic ties with Israel on Monday after a six-year rupture and has been trying to restore relations with Russia, a major backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

One of the U.S. officials said there had been a “marked increase” in encrypted Islamic State propaganda and communications on the dark web, which some American officials interpret as an effort to direct or inspire more attacks outside its home turf to offset its recent losses on the ground.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the probe, which they said is being led by Turkish officials with what they called intelligence support from the United States and other NATO allies.

 

(Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Can Sezer, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Ercan Gurses in Ankara, John Walcott in Washington, Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Sami Aboudi in Dubai, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Philippa Fletcher, Janet McBride)

Photo: An injured woman covers her face as she is carried by paramedics into ambulance at Istanbul Ataturk airport, Turkey, following a blast June 28, 2016. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

Travel Dilemmas: TSA’s Precheck Revamped To Restrict Program To Paying Customers Only

Travel Dilemmas: TSA’s Precheck Revamped To Restrict Program To Paying Customers Only

By Catharine Hamm, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Question: As a 100,000-mile flier each year for more than 15 years, I’ve had the Transportation Security Administration’s PreCheck — expedited screening — for several years through the Global Entry Program. These programs are wonderful. However, I’ve noticed for two years or so that the TSA PreCheck lines are getting longer. That would not be a surprise as more people join. But I often talk with people in the line who did not sign up for the program and do not travel often and who are surprised they are in that line. They don’t know what they need to do (or not do — they start taking off their shoes, pulling out computer, etc.). I understand the TSA wants to get more people through, but it is frustrating.

—Greg Parsons, Pasadena, Calif.

Answer: We have good news and bad news, depending on who you are. TSA’s “managed inclusion” came to an end in mid-September.

That’s the program that allowed people who hadn’t paid for the privilege to get the same benefits as paying customers.

Those benefits: For $85 for five years through TSA or $100 as part of the Global Entry program (which also expedites re-entry into the U.S.), PreCheck members get to use faster lines and don’t have to remove shoes, jacket, laptop or liquids from carry-on bags.

PreCheck, we should note, does not exempt you from screening; it just makes it less a hassle. You still have to go through a detection device before you board a plane.

Before the program began to catch on, PreCheck lines often were empty, which seemed an inefficient use of TSA personnel. Enter managed inclusion, in which fliers who hadn’t paid their money got to enjoy life in the fast lane.

People who suddenly had the benefit were puzzled about why, but worse, they often didn’t know what they were supposed to do. Many went through the drill — shoes and jacket off, for instance — even though they didn’t have to.

For those of us who do know what to do, the newbies were like people on the top step of a full, downward-bound escalator who fall forward and start a toppling domino effect (but without bodily harm).

Our unhappiness about line crashers may have contributed slightly to the decision to end managed inclusion, but it was probably other issues with TSA, including an internal Homeland Security report, which ABC News got its hands on, that showed lapses in airport security.

There were other miscues as well. Sara Jane Olson got to use PreCheck at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Olson, you may recall, was convicted of trying to kill two Los Angeles police officers and has since been paroled. She was a member of the leftist group called Symbionese Liberation Army, which kidnapped Patricia Hearst in 1974.

Not a ringing endorsement for managed inclusion. Here are some other changes as well, according to a TSA statement: “TSA has recently eliminated the practice of utilizing behavior detection officers and explosive trace detection sampling to direct certain passengers into TSA PreCheck expedited screening lanes.”

You can expect more scrutiny during the holiday season, given recent world events. That could include more checkpoints as you drive into the airport (meaning you should allow extra time). You may notice more TSA officers and may be able to spot the occasional plainclothes officer.

You won’t be able to miss the canine detection. There are about 800 dogs (mostly Belgian Malinois) working at U.S. airports as part of explosives detection, which is TSA’s biggest worry, said Nico Melendez, a TSA representative.

TSA faces an enormous task given the diversity of our nation’s airports. There’s a saying among airport administrators: If you’ve seen one airport, you’ve seen one airport. There are about 400 airports you and I use to get to Grandma’s house, and each represents unique security challenges.

In 2014 TSA said it screened more than 653 million passengers — about 1.8 million a day. Agents confiscated more than 2,200 firearms, the vast majority of them loaded.

With that workload, should we give TSA a break? No. We can’t afford to. And for whatever its flaws, TSA certainly doesn’t want its legacy to be a security failure.

Making PreCheck do what it’s supposed to do is a first step — but it is one of many more on this road.

(Have a travel dilemma? Write to travel@latimes.com. We regret we cannot answer every inquiry.)

©2015 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Hawaiian Airlines via Flickr

 

Indonesia Extends Airport Closures Due To Erupting Volcano

Indonesia Extends Airport Closures Due To Erupting Volcano

By Gde Putra Wicaksana, AFP

Denpasar, Indonesia — Indonesia extended to Saturday the closure of three airports, including on the holiday hotspot of Bali, due to drifting ash from a volcano, spelling more flight cancellations and travel chaos for thousands of vacationers.

Authorities closed the airport on Bali, the international airport on popular Lombok island, and three others serving domestic routes late Thursday as Mount Raung on Java spewed clouds of ash into the sky.

The closure of Bali airport came during peak season, when tourists flock to the tropical island to enjoy its palm-fringed beaches, and crowds of anxious visitors packed out the terminal buildings as they waited for more information about their flights.

The government initially said all airports would not be operational until late Friday. But later in the day, the transport ministry said that Bali and two small airports in East Java would remain closed until at least Saturday morning.

“All three of them will be closed until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow,” ministry spokesman J.A. Barata told AFP. “The air is still not clear.”

Lombok’s international airport, and a smaller one on the island, were re-opened earlier Friday.

Tourists described chaotic scenes at Bali’s Ngurah Rai airport. Katie Nagar, an American expatriate, described arriving at the domestic terminal to discover her flight to Jakarta on Indonesian flag carrier Garuda had been canceled and rescheduled to Sunday.

“There’s basically just hundreds of people camped out on the grassy lawns in front of the airport. There’s lines of hundreds of people waiting to talk to customer service,” she told AFP.

Many were also waiting in the international terminal, with some trying to seek information from airport officials while others were sitting or sleeping on the floor.

The travel chaos came at a busy time in Bali, with many Australians visiting the island during the school break and millions of Indonesians setting off on holiday ahead of the Muslim celebration of Eid next week.

Trikora Harjo, general manager at Ngurah Rai airport near Denpasar, Bali’s capital, said that 330 flights — 160 domestic and 170 international — had been canceled at the airport due to the ash cloud.

Garuda said it had canceled a total of 112 flights Friday. Most were to and from Bali airport, but 18 were to other airports affected by the ash cloud. AirAsia, Virgin Australia, Jetstar, and Air New Zealand also confirmed flights to Bali had been canceled.

Emitting Flames

Authorities raised the alert status of Mount Raung, a 3,300-meter (10,800-foot) volcano, late last month to the second highest level after it began to spew lava and ash high into the air.

Government vulcanologist Surono, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, said eruptions were continuing at the volcano Friday, and it was producing flames and a thundering sound. But authorities said no evacuations were necessary as those living in the area were already a safe distance away.

Air traffic is regularly disrupted by volcanic eruptions in Indonesia, which sits on a belt of seismic activity running around the basin of the Pacific Ocean and is home to the highest number of active volcanoes in the world, around 130.

It also occurs in other parts of the world — in 2010, the eruption of an Icelandic volcano caused the biggest closure of European airspace in peacetime, halting 100,000 flights and stranding 8 million passengers.

Australian carriers Virgin Australia and Jetstar began canceling flights earlier than other airlines, and had already axed a number of services in recent days even before Bali airport was fully closed.

Virgin Australia said in a statement Friday that “our team of meteorologists continue to work closely with the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in Darwin and monitor the situation. Once conditions improve, additional flights will be scheduled between Australia and Denpasar to ensure we can have guests on their way as soon as possible.”

Photo: Denpasar Airport, Bali, Indonesia via Wikimedia Commons

Two Under Observation At Hospitals After Falling Ill During Flights From Liberia To O’Hare

Two Under Observation At Hospitals After Falling Ill During Flights From Liberia To O’Hare

Chicago Tribune

(MCT) — Two people who arrived at O’Hare International Airport from Liberia have been placed under observation at Chicago hospitals, under the city’s procedures for handling Ebola, after they fell ill during their flights, officials said.
Health officials stressed that “at this time there have been no confirmed cases of Ebola and there is no threat to the general public.”
In fact, the officials said they decided against testing the two for Ebola after initial medical evaluations but did send them to Lurie Children’s Hospital and Rush University Medical Center for observation. They are being kept in isolation.
The two hospitals are among four in Chicago that have agreed to take Ebola patients from other hospitals and health care providers should any cases appear in the area. The others are Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the University of Chicago Medical Center.
The child had vomited during a flight from Liberia to O’Hare, city health officials said. Upon landing, the child was screened by federal authorities and was found to have no other symptoms and no known risk of exposure. The child was taken to Lurie “out of an abundance of caution” and was undergoing observation in isolation.
Following city guidelines, the child’s family was under quarantine until the evaluation was completed.
The other passenger, an adult traveling alone from Liberia, reported nausea and diarrhea during another flight from Liberia. The passenger reported having been diagnosed with typhoid fever in August but had a normal temperature and reported no known risk of exposure to Ebola during a screening.
The person was taken to Rush for medical evaluation and observation, health officials said.
The city released no other details of the passengers or their flights.

AFP Photo/Jay Directo

Want more national news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter.