Security Lessons from Istanbul, Brussels

New Straits Times

26 July 2016

Eugene EG Tan

THERE have been several attacks by terrorists on major international airports in the past year. In the latest attack on June 28, a suicide gun-and-bomb attack was carried out by three men at Istanbul Ataturk Airport, causing at least 36 deaths.

Another airport in Istanbul, Sabiha GÃ¶kÃ§en, was also attacked earlier on Dec 23 by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) causing one death.

While it would be easy to label Istanbul as a prime target because of its proximity to the conflict in Syria, the attacks on Brussels Zaventum Airport on March 22 remind us that terrorist attacks can hit any international airport in the world.

On that day, three men detonated suicide vests inside the airport, causing 16 deaths and injuring hundreds more.

Moreover, while these attacks have been largely attributed to the Islamic State (IS) and other terrorist organisations like TAK, there was a smaller scale incident where a homemade bomb was detonated at Shanghai Pudong Airport on June 12 by a man thought to have huge gambling debts, injuring four people.

… The writer is associate research fellow at the Centre of Excellence for National Security, a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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