Today, police footage shared with Turkish media shows officers arresting Albashir, who is from Syria, at a house where she was allegedly hiding.
The suspect’s arrest comes as CCTV appears to show the suspected bomber running away from the scene of the explosion, reports local newspaper Aksam.
Minutes after the bomb explosion, the suspect, wearing what appears to be a hijab, is seen running through a crowd of bewildered onlookers, who were looking behind them at the aftermath of the bombing. She is the only person looking forwards.
Albashir, who is believed to have planted a bag containing the bomb on a park bench, is among 46 people who have been detained by police since the attack.
Bozdag said: ‘A woman had been sitting on one of the benches for more than 40 minutes and then she got up. ‘One or two minutes later, an explosion occurred.
‘There are two possibilities,’ he said. ‘There’s either a mechanism and it explodes, or someone remotely explodes (it). All data on this woman are currently under scrutiny,’ he added.
The suspect who left the bomb that killed six people and injured 81 others on Istanbul’s Istiklal Avenue was captured, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said early Monday. Soylu was speaking to reporters at the scene of the explosion, which tore down the busy shopping street.
He said 21 others linked to the bomber were also detained, adding the existing findings showed it was an attack perpetrated by the PKK/YPG terrorist group, referring to a branch of the PKK terrorist group in Syria’s north, bordering Türkiye. “We have evaluated that the instruction for the attack came from Kobani,” Soylu told reporters, adding that the bomber had “passed through Afrin in northern Syria.”
There has been some serious activity in Afrin as of late. Kaz and I had touched on it briefly in the comment section.