Istanbul Ataturk airport attack: At least 28 dead and dozens injured

A gun and suicide bomb attack on Istanbul's Ataturk international airport has killed at least 28 people and injured up to 60.

Up to three attackers were involved, with one reportedly opening fire with a Kalashnikov as they targeted an entry point to the terminal.

Recent bombings in Turkey have been linked to either Kurdish separatists or the so-called Islamic State group.

This looks like a major, co-ordinated assault, the BBC's Mark Lowen reports.

Ataturk airport was long seen as a vulnerable target, our Turkey correspondent adds, reporting from a plane at the airport.

There are X-ray scanners at the entry to the terminal but security checks for cars are limited.

'Dressed in black'

Flights in and out of the airport were suspended after the attack.

Taxis were used to rush casualties to hospital in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

The Istanbul governor gave the death toll of 28 after first reports of 10 fatalities. The state-run Anadolu agency said around 60 people had been wounded, six of them seriously.

Two South African tourists, Paul and Susie Roos from Cape Town, were at the airport and due to fly home at the time of the explosions.

"We came up from the arrivals to the departures, up the escalator when we heard these shots going off," Mr Roos told the Associated Press new agency.

"There was this guy going roaming around, he was dressed in black and he had a hand gun."

Charles Michel, the prime minister of Belgium whose capital city was targeted by bombers in March, tweeted from the EU summit in Brussels: "Our thoughts are with the victims of the attacks at Istanbul's airport. We condemn these atrocious acts of violence."

In December, a blast on the tarmac at a different Istanbul airport, Sabiha Gokcen, killed a cleaner. That attack was claimed by a Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK).

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