The alleged attacker behind last year’s terror attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk airport has been killed in a police operation, the Georgian security agency said on Friday.
Georgia’s State Security Service confirmed that Akhmed Chataev was among three suspects killed in a counter-terrorism operation in Tbilisi on November 22.
Spokesman Nino Giorgobiani said Chataev, a Russian national of Chechen origin, blew himself up while the other suspects were killed by security officers.
Chataev, 37, has been identified as the planner of the Daesh-linked attack on the airport on June 28, 2016 by Turkish authorities.
The bomb and gun attack saw 46 people and three attackers killed.
The attack also left more than 200 injured.
Georgian police stormed Chataev’s hideout in an apartment block after hours of negotiations, Giorgobiani said, according to the Agenda news website.
He added that US authorities were helping to identify the other two killed in the operation.
The security service added that Chataev, who lost a hand and leg in a confrontation with Georgian security forces in August 2012, was listed as a terrorist by the US in 2015 over planned attacks on US and Turkish targets.
By 2015, he had allegedly travelled to Daesh-controlled areas of Syria and Iraq and was named as an organiser of the airport attack by Turkish authorities late last year.
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