Story highlights
The deadly attack at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport is the latest in Turkey
Scores of people have died in other bombings and attacks in the country
Three assailants killed dozens of people and injured scores of others in a gun and suicide bombing attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport on Tuesday, Turkish officials said.
The attackers arrived in a taxi carrying guns, then opened fire before detonating themselves, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on national television early Wednesday.
This is the most recent violence in Turkey, which has been plagued by unrest in 2016. Other recent attacks include:
June 8: Car bomb in Midyat
Three people were killed by a car bomb in the southeastern Turkish town of Midyat – the second such attack on Turkish police targets in two days.
June 7: 11 killed in Istanbul
A car bomb attack targeting a police bus killed 11 people in Istanbul, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu agency reported, citing police officials.
The blast, in the Beyazit neighborhood of Istanbul’s historic Fatih district, occurred during morning rush hour. It killed seven police officers and four civilians and left 36 people injured, three of them critically, authorities said. Four people were detained.
March 31: 7 police officers slain
Seven police officers died and at least 27 more people were wounded by a car bombing close to a bus terminal in southeastern Turkey.
The bomb went off as a police vehicle was going past in the Baglar district of Diyarbakir, the capital of its namesake province, about 170 kilometers (100 miles) from the Syrian border, according to Turkey’s semiofficial Anadolu news agency.
The injured include 14 civilians and 13 police. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack.
March 19: Istanbul blast kills 4 foreigners
A suicide bomber detonated explosives in a busy tourist area of central Istanbul, killing at least four people and wounding 36 others.
Two of the four dead were American-Israeli dual citizens, an Israeli government source and a U.S. source said. A third Israeli also died, along with an Iranian.
Interior Minister Efkan Ala identified that attacker as Mehmet Ozturk and claimed he had links to ISIS.
March 13: Kurdish rebels claim Ankara blast
Thirty-seven people died in when a car bomb ripped through a busy square in Turkey’s capital, Ankara.
The Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, or TAK – a militant offshoot of the Kurdish separatist group PKK, which seeks an independent state in Turkey – boasted that its members carried out this attack.
A ceasefire between Turkey and the PKK, or Kurdistan Worker’s Party, fell apart last summer. Since then, Turkish forces have bombed the terror group’s positions in northern Iraq and imposed curfews in crackdowns on heavily Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey.
February 17: Explosion hits military vehicles
An explosion apparently targeting military vehicles in Ankara left 29 dead and 61 wounded, according to Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus. All but one of the fatalities were members of the security forces.
Three military vehicles and one private vehicle were stopped at a traffic light when the bomb went off, sending large flames shooting into the night sky.
Later that week, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons called that attack a “suicide revenge mission” for Turkish military operations in the southeastern Turkish district of Cizre and threatened more violence.
January 12: Strike near tourist attractions
A suicide blast in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet Square killed 13 people, eight of them Germans, in what was viewed as a strike against both Turkish culture and the country’s multibillion-dollar tourism industry.
The explosion ripped through a typically busy area between between the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque, both major tourist attractions in Istanbul.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed ISIS, which has entrenched itself in neighboring Syria and Iraq while lashing out elsewhere again and again.
CNN’s Ralph Ellis contributed to this report.
