TBILISI, Georgia: A Chechen warlord suspected of organizing the 2016 suicide bombing at Istanbul’s airport may be among those killed last week during a counter-terror operation in Tbilisi, Georgia said Monday.
“We suspect that maybe it’s (Akhmed) Chatayev,” the spokeswoman for Georgia’s security service, Nino Giorgobiani, told AFP.
Media reports had already suggested that the one-armed leader of an Daesh group cell in Istanbul was killed during Wednesday’s operation on the outskirts of the Georgian capital.
“We can only give a definitive answer after experts conclude their work,” Giorgobiani said, adding that “the relevant United States agencies joined in with the investigation.”
Authorities said one suspected member of a “terrorist group” was arrested and three more were killed on Wednesday during the operation in Tbilisi’s suburban Isani district.
Georgia’s security service has said it was working to identify the group, with the help of international counter-terrorism organizations.
In an earlier statement, Giorgobiani said that the three men “refused to surrender, opened fire with automatic rifles and threw hand grenades at counter-terrorist units,” killing one serviceman and wounding four others.
Turkish media have identified Chatayev as the organizer of the June 2016 triple suicide bombing at Istanbul’s main airport in which forty-seven people were killed and 200 wounded.
Forty-six suspects went on trial in connection with the case earlier this month. The three bombers are believed to be from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and entered Turkey from Syria’s Raqqa, IS’s de-facto capital at the time.
Chatayev, who reportedly found accommodation for the bombers, was in 2015 put on a terror blacklist by the US Treasury and the UN Security Council for his allegiance to IS and Al-Qaeda.
Georgia has no recent history of major terror attacks.
Some 50 Georgians are believed to be fighting alongside IS extremists in Syria and Iraq, officials have said.
Most are ethnic Chechen Muslim minority residents of the Pankisi valley in the country’s northeast, which has developed a reputation as a jihadist hotbed.
Istanbul bombing organizer possibly killed in Georgia
Istanbul bombing organizer possibly killed in Georgia
WHO alarmed by health workers, civilians ‘forcibly detained’ in Sudan
- The WHO counts and verifies attacks on health care, though it does not attribute blame as it is not an investigation agency
GENEVA: The World Health Organization voiced alarm Tuesday at reports that more than 70 health workers and around 5,000 civilians were being detained in Nyala in southwestern Sudan.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a brutal conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 12 million more and devastated infrastructure.
“We are concerned by reports from Nyala, the capital of Sudan’s South Darfur state, that more than 70 health care workers are being forcibly detained along with about 5,000 civilians,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
“According to the Sudan Doctors Network, the detainees are being held in cramped and unhealthy conditions, and there are reports of disease outbreaks,” the UN health agency chief said.
The RSF and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North faction allied earlier this year, forming a coalition based in Nyala.
“WHO is gathering more information on the detentions and conditions of those being held. The situation is complicated by the ongoing insecurity,” said Tedros.
“The reported detentions of health workers and thousands more people is deeply concerning. Health workers and civilians should be protected at all times and we call for their safe and unconditional release.”
The WHO counts and verifies attacks on health care, though it does not attribute blame as it is not an investigation agency.
In total, the WHO has recorded 65 attacks on health care in Sudan this year, resulting in 1,620 deaths and 276 injuries. Of those attacks, 54 impacted personnel, 46 impacted facilities and 33 impacted patients.
Earlier Tuesday, UN rights chief Volker Turk said he was “alarmed by the further intensification in hostilities” in the Kordofan region in southern Sudan.
“I urge all parties to the conflict and states with influence to ensure an immediate ceasefire and to prevent atrocities,” he said.
“Medical facilities and personnel have specific protection against attack under international humanitarian law,” Turk added.
