Israelis killed and injured in Istanbul blast return home
Published March 20, 2016
Emergency services inspecting the area following a suicide bombing in a major shopping and tourist district in the central part of Istanbul, Turkey, March 19, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey. (Burak Kara/Getty Images)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Two Magen David Adom planes brought five Israelis injured in a suicide bomb attack in Istanbul back to Israel.
The moderately and lightly injured Israelis landed in Israel on Sunday.
A third plane sent from the Israel Defense Forces on Sunday repatriated the bodies of the three Israeli victims. The three victims were named as Avraham Goldman, 69, from Herzliya; Yonatan Suher, 40, from Tel Aviv; and Simcha Damri, 60, from Dimona. Damri’s husband, Avi, was moderately wounded in the attack. The fourth victim of the attack was an Iranian national identified as Ali Reza Razmhah.
Two of the victims had dual American and Israeli citizenship, according to Israeli officials. The U.S. State Department confirmed that Suher and Goldman were U.S. citizens.
“Terrorism sows death around the world. Israel is at the forefront of the fight against global terrorism. This struggle is first of all military, but no less is it a moral struggle. The key to the moral fight against terrorism is to make it clear that terrorism, the murder of innocents, has no justification anywhere – not in Istanbul or the Ivory Coast or Jerusalem. Whoever does not condemn terrorism, supports terrorism,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
The prime minister also offered condolences to the families of the victims of the attack, and wished a speedy recovery to those who were wounded.
On Sunday, the suicide bomber was identified as Turkish citizen Mehmet Ozturk by Turkey’s interior minister, Efkan Ala. Ozturk reportedly had ties to the Islamic state.
“The identity of the terrorist who carried out this reprehensible attack has been determined…The findings obtained show that the terrorist is linked to the Daesh terror organization,” the interior minister said, according to the Associated Press. Daesh is using another acronym for IS, or the Islamic State.
Also on Sunday, Israel’s Counter-Terrorism Bureau issued a travel warning, calling on Israel’s to not travel to Turkey. The warning comes after Saturday’s attack, and also cites the significant rise over the past two months in terror threats in Turkey, especially suicide bombings and particularly in Istanbul and Ankara, the capital.
The warning was raised from Level 4, meaning an ongoing potential threat, to Level 2, defined as a basic concrete threat.
It reads: “Following an assessment of the situation in wake of the worsening magnitude of terrorist attacks in Turkey, in centers of tourism and crowded areas, especially yesterday’s attack in Istanbul in which Israeli citizens were murdered and wounded, and due to the concern of additional attacks, the NSCCTB upgrades its existing travel warning and recommends that the public avoid visiting Turkey.”
