Posted on 12/23/2015 2:08:20 AM PST by csvset
ISTANBUL (AFP) -
One person was killed and another wounded after an explosion of unknown origin Wednesday at an airport in Istanbul, Turkish television reports said.
Airport cleaner Zehra Yamac, 30, died of head wounds hours after the blast on the tarmac at Sabiha Gokcen airport on the Asian side of Turkey's largest city, CNN-Turk and NTV television reported.
J-Post reports it was a airplane cleaner who was killed, and an associate injured....while in the process of cleaning a plane.
I would suspect....one or the other...were placing an explosive and screwed up. This occurred around 2AM local time, and reportedly involves a Pegasus passenger plane. No passengers were involved....just a plane being serviced and prepared for the morning flight.
Yikes! I’ve flown Pegasus Airlines several times into this airport. This is the new airport on the Asian side.
I flew Pegasus back in the spring...one of those airlines I’ll never go back to. They had all kinds of extra fees tied into the travel after I showed up at the airport.
It’s a damn shame that it didn’t “GET RID OF” more muslim bombers !
Most recently flew with them in August. Went R/T Russia to London. The flight was OK...but like you say, they charge for EVERYTHING. A small bottle of water is about $2. My wife went crazy shopping in London, so we had excess baggage - on each leg of the flight! Paid through the nose!! One passenger was in a fight at the check-un. Their carry-on was 10kg, and the maximum is 8kg.
It was supposed to go off inside the plane with the cabin doors closed and pressurized to 10,000 feet. With the doors open, the damage is very small compared to what happens in flight.
A miracle happened and saved many, many lives.
Just got home and heard of this. Been playing airport all night.
Looking at the Originators for Pegasus at that airport, they are all domestic Turkish service, until Amsterdam at 715Am (A-320), and London at 815AM (737-800) I haven’t seen any pics yet, but I’d bet the bomb was directed at one of these two flights.
It could be that the device went off as it was being planted . . . or that it was disturbed while cleaning the plane? I think investigators decided that the device on the Russian airliner over Egypt was concealed beneath a seat.
Constantinople...
No more updates from this source and the story seems to have been pulled from UK news outlets, but on The Professional Pilots Rumour Network (PPrune) it has been posted that it was mortar (or improvised) rounds fired at the airport; several planes damaged; the casualties were innocent victims.
Kurdish group claims responsibility for deadly Istanbul airport attack
A Kurdish militant group once linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has claimed responsibility for an attack at Istanbul’s second airport this week that left an aircraft cleaner dead and injured another.
In a statement, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) said they carried out the mortar attack on Wednesday at Sabiha Gokcen airport that also damaged five aircraft.
The group has in the past claimed responsibility for some attacks outside the PKK's regular area of operation in the mainly Kurdish southeast, such as a 2012 assault on a Turkish military bus that killed two soldiers and injured 12 people in a coastal resort town.
TAK has said the relationship with PKK militants has been severed. Both groups are regarded as terrorist organisations by Ankara and the United States.
A two-year ceasefire between the PKK and Ankara fell apart in July and the southeast has been plunged back into a decades-old conflict which has killed more than 40,000 people.
The PKK wants greater autonomy for Turkey's Kurdish minority.
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