Euronews journalist Omer Gulel arrived on a flight into Istanbul airport minutes after the attacks had begun.
ADVERTISEMENTEuronews journalist Omer Gulel arrived on a flight into Istanbul airport minutes after the attacks had begun.
For nearly four hours he and other passengers were kept on board the plane fearing the worst. He phoned the following report.
“We are still waiting on board the Turkish Airlines passenger plane which took off from Lyon. When we arrived we were told that we had to stay here for security reasons. There were no further announcements and waiting got longer and longer.”
“We eventually began to get information via the internet and by phone calls with relatives and we learned of the frightening dreadful things going on in the airport which had become a target of a terror attack.”
“It’s very quiet on the plane. The biggest argument has been about smoking and the children are starting to whine. But apart from everything else, the saddest thing is that nobody is terribly surprised. We’ve heard about these kinds of thing happening all too frequently and unfortunately we are getting used to it. That is almost as bad as the attack itself.”
“After getting very little information it’s now been announced that the airport has been closed and all flights have been affected. From time to time we’ve been given food and drink, but we’ve now run out of water.”
“Well we’ve now been told we are going to be evacuated soon. After taking our luggage, we must leave the airport without entering the terminal building. But we are still waiting. We’ve learned that they have evacuated the people inside the terminal first, followed by the others in the domestic flights terminal.”
“We should be getting off soon which is good as although we’ve been getting some information from Twitter in the last hour the internet connection has got quite slow.”