Morning after Istanbul Airport Attack, People Assess Implications

JERUSALEM, Israel – The Istanbul airport opened partially the morning after the deadly Islamic terror attack that killed 41 people and wounded nearly 150. While no group has claimed responsibility, the attack looks like the work of the Islamic State.

Closed-circuit television captured the attack in progress. One stunning video shows one of the terrorists being shot by an airport policeman before blowing himself up seconds later.

At least three suicide bombers struck the international terminal at the Istanbul airport, the third busiest in Europe. Some panicked travelers huddled in stores for protection while others ran for their lives.

"When I was in [there], people were shooting from one side and we all ran the other way and then bombs went off and people started running the other way and there was more shooting and we came out and, after that, I think there was another bomb. But not really sure," Adam Keally, a tourist from Boston, said.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed ISIS for the attack.

Some Israeli experts believe the more ground ISIS loses inside Syria and Iraq, the more dangerous it becomes around the world.

"The bad news so to speak [is] as ISIS contracts physically in terms of its territorial holdings on the ground, what we're likely to see unfortunately is an increasing use of international terrorism by ISIS," Jonathan Spyer, a top Israeli counterterrorism expert, told CBN News.

"ISIS going from a territorial power on the ground back to what it was before: namely a kind of transnational terrorist organization," Spyer explained. "I think if we look at the increasing number, the increasing list of international terrorist actions taken by ISIS in the course of the last year, France and Brussels and so on and so forth, we're already [seeing] that's the pattern of events to come, I think."

The attack itself came during the final week of the Islamic month of Ramadan and on the second anniversary of ISIS declaring its caliphate.

ISIS has a huge capability for terrorism: a large border with the Islamic State and Turkey is now saturated with terror cells. Spyer told CBN News he expects Turkey to hit ISIS back. Striking an airport multiplies the impact of a terror attack by disrupting travel plans for tens of thousands, he explained.

A tourist from Virginia said, "Our family tells us so many restaurants and shops are shutting down. And we wanted to go support them, but I'm not going to bring my small child to a terrorist zone."

"It makes me very nervous, very nervous. I'm not sure I want to travel today," one traveler with children said.

"Right now, they're trying to redirect us. We're trying to get another flight to go somewhere else 'cause we feel unsafe to send the kids out there. So we don't want them to go to Istanbul at all," another said.

Before the attack, the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning advising Americans that terror groups may target aviation services.

The scenes at the Istanbul airport looked eerily similar to the scenes at the Brussels airport just two months ago. It's just one more example of the growing list of global terror attacks in the war against Islamic terrorism.