Blast at Turkey airport kills cleaner

A person has been killed and three planes damaged in an explosion at an airport in Istanbul, triggering a security alert.

Istanbul - Turkey

Istanbul - Turkey Source: Getty Images

An explosion at an airport in Istanbul has killed one person and damaged three planes hundreds of metres apart, Turkish media says, triggering a security alert.

Authorities are trying to determine if a bomb was responsible for the blast at Sabiha Gokcen, the city's second airport and located on its Asian side.

The explosion happened in the early hours of the morning on Wednesday, 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 shortly afterwards.

Police declined to comment, while the airport said investigations into the cause of the blast were ongoing.

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 metres 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 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, 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.


Share
2 min read

Published

Updated

Source: AAP


Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world