hours ahead. >> brian todd, thanks so much for explaining that to us. that is it for me. i'm brianna keilar and we appreciate you watching us tonight with our breaking coverage. it continues as erin burnett "out front" starts right now. this is cnn breaking news. >> good evening. i'm erin burnett. out front tonight, the breaking news, a deadly terror attack. terrorist striking the main airport. the death toll is growing rapidly. right now we know for sure 28 people lost their lives, more than 60 are injured. those numbers are rising. at least three suicide bombers were among the attackers. new video from a surveillance video just in to cnn. we want to warn you that this is disturbing, but we want to show you exactly what happened here. it appears to show the moment one of the suicide bombers actually blew himself up. you see him fall there on the ground and what appears to be a gun skids along the floor and then -- you literally can see

this -- it is unclear what he's doing. you see that man run away -- and then you see the explosion. as we said, appearing to actually detonate himself. terrifying. unbelievable, what you actually see there. we understand from officials that there were at least three suicide bombers and when you see that gun skid across the floor. we understand that first they opened fire with kalashnikov assault rifles and then blowing themselves up which you actually see in the instance of this attacker and we actually have the exact moment that one of the explosions literally ripped through the airport. as you can see, people walking at that moment not expecting anything and that bright flash of fire and the debris starts to shower down. the blast sent panicked travelers running through the

terminal and this is cell phone picture of people running away and it shows people scrambling into airport stores and crouching, trying to stay hidden and we know they were hiding underneath check-in counters. president obama has been briefed on the attack and the faa has halted flights to and from istanbul. this is the second terror attack on an airport in three months and it comesas isis today released a video celebrating two years of its self-declared caliphate. we have reporters around the world covering this story. we begin with joe duran at the airport. joe, this is a heavily secured airport and you have security before you come in more than even in the united states. what do you know about who was behind this and how they carried it out? >> reporter: erin, i think it is too early to tell. i arrived over an hour ago. this, where i'm standing is the

airport road. what you see at the ataturk is the airport entrance. i've traveled many times through this airport and i've been based here for many years and normally at that entrance, you have policemen with machine guns and they stop, not every car, but they stopped certain cars. i don't know what happened tonight. as i came tonight, as we made our way down this road this road was full of people just running from the airport, passengers scared. some of them injured. and if you see, a few people walking around, but it's 200 meters from the entrance. earlier in the day we were at that point where there was a lot of chaos and there were people crying and people trying to leave the airport. we've been pushed back 200 meter, but if you can see there are people still trying -- they don't know if they're going to be traveling, but if we can just show people are walking through the airport expecting to take a

flight, and as far as we know, the airport is closed at the moment. >> all right, joe. thank you very much. i want to go to clarissa ward, our senior international correspondent. clarissa, this story has been developing so quickly. at first we thought perhaps only ten dead, maybe one bomber, maybe two and now it's up to nearly 30. the numbers are climbing, multiple suicide bombers, what are you learning is behind this attack? >> first of all, turkey is no stranger to terrorist attack, unfortunately. the main culprits historically have been kurdish separatists and also, of course, isis. i would say in this case from what i am looking at and from what others who are experts in the area have also seen, it seems to fit the profile much more of an isis-directed or possibly isis-inspired attack. now why? there are several reasons and isis likes to use what they call

what they call suicide fighters, they're not just blowing themselves up and they're trying to go in heavily armed and trying to kill as many people as they can before eventually blowing themselves up. we saw that obviously in the bataclan theater in paris. we haven't heard any claim of responsibility from isis yet, but erin, it's important to note that typically, isis has not claimed responsibility for its attacks in turkey and that's because they want to feed on the sense of uncertainty. they want to feed on the sense of chaos, striking the istanbul airport is a very symbolic target. this is a bridge between the east and the west. turkey is a very outward looking, western-friendly muslim country and all of these things that isis hates, and we did hear the spokesperson for isis adnanny calling for more attacks during ramadan either by people who are in isis or support isis or just inspired by isis, we are now, erin, in the last ten days

of ramadan. these are considered to be the ten holiest days of the holiest month of the year. traditionally this is a time for carrying out major attacks, but certainly we can say three bombers, all of them armed. this was a coordinated attack. it took some planning and so far it is fitting all of the profiles of an isis-directed or at the very least, isis-inspired attack, but as i said, no one has yet claimed responsibility, erin. >> out front now on the phone, lawrence cameron. he landed at ataturk airport just after the attacks occurred. you got out of that plane and walked into the airport and saw what you describe as an apocalypse. >> yeah, i mean, i didn't actually hear the blast, but i stepped around the plane and looked around the corner and there was a wave of screaming people towards me. i mean, the only other thing i could say is sort of a zombie a po pock lips and screaming and kids

on the floor and someone in a wheelchair stuck in a door crying out for help. the crowds ebbed and flowed and there were police and sort of camped out a bit and then flared up again, and this is just out of control. the police kept the whole thing closed for about half an hour, 45 minutes. but, yeah, just utter panic. you know, people crying. not much fun, really. and they finally did let us out and past the scene where sort of two blast sites. one was inside and more near duty-free from watching the images on tv is where this chap who was on the floor blew up and then there was another sort of site outside where the taxi rank was. a big blast had gone off there, but yeah, you know, was there

still blood on the floor and just -- just horrendous, really. >> and -- and as you said, when you went through passport control, did you -- were there other people at this point? were any of these stations even manned or was it completely basically abandoned? >> no. the police had blocked off the entire corridor to keep everyone out and we couldn't see anything beyond that and eventuep eventu brought in more police and let everyone through quite quickly and there was an absolute crush of people to get through because i guess some people had split up from relatives and friends. >> yeah. >> and then, people trying to mill around and looking back towards people and police just shutting us through. and right past the scene, at least two blasts from what i can tell. just horrendous, in the car park there were bloody rags on the

floor and just yeah -- yeah, pretty horrific stuff. >> lawrence, thank you very much for talking to us. i know you much be in shock. i am glad you are alive. former cia operative bob baird, and mitch silver, the former director of intelligence analysis at the police department and michael weiss, the co-author of "isis: inside the army of terror." >> it is hard to watch, but i want to show it so you can give us a sense of what happened here. the actual blast that you see there looks enormous. what does it tell you? >> you know, you're looking at the blast and the smoke. of course, it's early, but you know, acetone peroxide, this is available all around turkey and of course, syria and iraq. the guy mayave had a dead man

switch. i saw he had a gun and it looks like somebody shot him, a policeman and then he's down and let's go with that switch. the deadman switches aren't anything the police can do about it and you see that people were running away from the guy and probably had heavy garments and was hiding a bomb and unless you are going through a metal detector, no way to figure out that these people are wearing suicide vests. these people knew what they were doing and the detonators went off and they apparently had some practice. >> mitch, when you see that explosion, it appears that you're looking inside the airport and we know two of the bombs were inside the airport and before security and inside the airport and when you see that explosion, what do you see? >> clearly, erin. they decided to attack the airport where it's most vulnerable where you're at the ticket counters before you've gone through security where there hasn't been much vetting to prevent anyone from detecting

you and the idea that suicide bombers. this very much looks like from the way it was carried out almost a replay to the degree of what we saw in bruss els in march. >> mitch, i want to play now another video. this video appears to be one of the suicide bombers and it's very eerie and awful to see, but this could tell us a lot about what happened here. he actually runs. it appears that he's shot. falls to the ground and his gun skids out in front of him. then 10 or 15 seconds will go by here, but you can see him sort of struggling and someone will run by and it appears he's struggling and i know bob baer is talking about a dead man switch and you see his arm go up there and a couple of seconds later, there's the explosion. when you see that, what do you see, had the gun and had some sort of a vest on his person. >> he obviously was not able to take out more people using his

gun, this would be the moment at which he would try to kill as many people as possible using whatever explosive device was strapped to him. this would be standard protocol for an isis suicide fighter as he was describing, once you are done with your rounds, mass rating people with automatic fire then you detonate the bomb although it didn't look like many people were surrounding and one guy came by and saw this guy was about to do something terrible and ran off. all bets are off and he did not want to be taken alive by the turkish police. that was very much clear. >> juliette, when he fall, gun skids and that appears to be very clear. there wasn't anyone around him at that very instant, but the explosion is again, like the other one, just looking at it as a lay person it looks very large. >> yes. absolutely. and purposeful. look, i was just looking online,

this airport has 284 flight destinations of 113 countries. this is not turkey's airport. it's the world's airport, and so for those of us who have traveled east of paris, turkey is actually tends to be the central point of destination. s and for u.s. homeland security purposes it is the last point of departure airport. that means that tsa is there and it's checking cargo, people and the plane itself, but it can't sort of go in and protect every airport, right? that's the responsibility of the nation itself and that's the challenge with the last point of departure flights is if they're coming into the united states at airports that are always going to have soft aspects to them and vulnerabilities to them. >> as i indicated at the top of the show the story is changing quickly. the death toll has gone up. we now can confirm 32 people are dead and 88 are wounded. bob baer, this was something

that was coordinated. we know there were at least three attackers and they had clear plans. they had the guns and they had the suicide vests and what does that tell you about the amount of planning, the planning that went into this? >> erin, the last couple of days i've been looking at all of the islamic state attacks, yemen, lebanon, jordan and the two major attacks there. you have to wonder whether these people have not organized some sort of external jihad especially after the fall of fallujah. the purpose of this group is to say we're here. we're not going anywhere and go ahead, take fallujah, but we're going to hit you elsewhere and it's in this context until we get more details and confirmation that i look at this that certainly the islamic state can get people across the border into turkey and launch an attack like this very logical, istanbul airport and it's an international airport and turkey is a key ally, a member of nato and a very westernized country and this really, really is a damaging, damaging attack.

>> all right. thank you all very much. you're going to be with me with the hours. >> more on our breaking news, the turkey bombing. the bombers unleashing an arsenal before they actually went through security and the deadly terror attack coming right after the state department. they issued this yesterday, increased terror threat in turkey. what more do officials know from the chatter and a congressman who was just briefed will be out front as our breaking coverage continues.

this just got interesting. why pause to take a pill? or stop to find a bathroom? cialis for daily use is approved to treat both erectile dysfunction and the urinary symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently, day or night. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, or adempas for pulmonary hypertension, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any symptoms of an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis and a $200 savings card

mr. brady, we've been expecting you.

will you be needing anything else? no. not a thing. beautyrest black. get your beautyrest.

we are following the breaking news of a deadly terror attack at one of the busiest airports in the world, one of the most secure airports. the death toll climbing at this hour, 32 dead and 88 wounded. chilling new video that captures the chilling moment that at least one of the three suicide bombers unleashed this horrific attack inside of the main airport in istanbul, turkey. you see the attacker on the ground seconds before he detonates himself in that massive explosion. at least one of the terrorists, we are told, opened fire with a kalashnikov rifle before blowing himself up. that rifle skids out of his hand. the white house issued a statement condemning in the strongest possible terms today's heinous terrorist attack in their words. our senior international correspondent ivan watson is en route back to istanbul, a city he knows very well. ivan obviously in paris tonight. we've all been through this airport, you more than almost anyone. right now it is shut down and

this is one of the busiest airports in the world. >> reporter: that's right. it's shut down and as we just saw from joe duran at the beginning of your broadcast there are still people trying to get into the airport with their luggage hoping to travel out, just to give you a sense of the sheer volume of people that expect to move through that airport every day and of course, shut down right now. according to a turkish government official, there are three attackers with suicide vests, one in the parking lot. two outside the arrivals hall who all detonated their suicide vests. we are getting slightly contradictory numbers from different government officials as to the casualties and a turkish embassy official in washington telling cnn 32 dead, at least 88 wounded. the justice minister going on record that the number of fatalities are at least 31 dead and 147 wounded. regardless, it is a mass

casualty attack and it is also on the gateway to istanbul's -- turkey's largest city, its commercial capital, a crossroads of travel from across the world and for people who have not been there, let me just paint a picture for you. if you drive into the airport compound, you go through a police checkpoint where police with sub machine guns can stop and search vehicles, their trunks as they're going in and as you're driving then to the arrivals hall there typically are lines of dozens of taxis there and that's where we see in some of the video and some of the security camera video that clearly an explosion took place. if you wanted to go into the arrivals hall say to meet somebody arriving, you would first have to go through lines of security, erin. you have to go through a metal detector that's manned by police officers, by security guards and to even get into the arrivals

hall where there would be a starbucks, other coffee shops as well as other boutiques and things like that, and normally in that area at any time of day, dozens and dozens of people milling around either arriving, leaving, a very, very busy place, and clearly, going to do more damage to turkey's already -- tourism industry which is suffering as it battles two terrorist organizations simultaneously, isis and the kurdistan workers party or pkk. erin? >> thank you very much. ivan watson. sue savage joins me on the phone. she was at the airport. you were there and you heard the gun shots? >> oh, absolutely. while we were there my friend was flying out that evening and i'm flying in a couple of days and i just recognized the gun shots and then heard this huge explosion, and i knew immediately it was a bomb, and i just bolted as fast as i can --

not very fast, and went into the first room i could find which happened to be a mens prayer room, but i left there fairly quickly and ended up actually in a mens toilet in one of the stalls with this lovely young woman and a young boy and we waited there easily half an hour. came out of there and went into a secure room with the x-ray luggage and all of a sudden we heard more screams and more gunshot, and i ducked into the place where they x-ray luggage, and everybody else bolted out, but this was the closest place for me, and i must have been in there ten or 15 minutes before i peaked out and was told, no, it's okay, you can come out now and a lot of us, about 30 of us were herded into a womans prayer room where we stat for 45 minuts or so and said it was all clear.

they escorted us to the front of the airport and took us down the escalator and we were on the ground floor at the arrivals hall and there was a lot of blood. it was obviously one of the place where one of the suicide bomber his blown themselves up. there was a huge pile of still damp blood and it was a couple of hours after and there were drip marks everywhere. it was this scarf that had fallen down and there was glass and when they escorted us around the other side of the escalator where you can exchange currency and there was so much blasts on the floor and there was scuffing aside so that we didn't slip. it was everywhere. >> it just sounds unbelievable. sue, when you -- when you first heard those shots before you heard the explosion, i know it's impossible to try to remember exactly, but did it sound like a lot of shots?

a lot of guns? do you have any sense of exactly what you were hearing about the shooting? >> they all sounded the same. i got the impression they were from a semiautomatic. they didn't sound like separate handguns. they were two quick together which means that had to be a semiautomatic or automatic. >> and then you heard the explosion go off and how much time between those two things? did you have enough time before you realized before you heard the big explosion? >> i've heard gunshots before and i ended up somewhere in the middle of a shootout at a bank, but that's another story in another continent and i recognized the gun shots immediately, and altogether i heard about three, but there was one and then there was another one and later on there was at least 20 minutes later there were more gunshots. so, yeah, i knew immediately what it was. >> but you're saying this went

on for 20 minutes or more? >> well, the original gunshots were less than a minute, i think. less than a minute. there was a lot of them and then there was this boom, and then there was more gunshots and another boom. so there was a lot of audio activity going on, and -- the thing is -- and you hate to say it, but it's self-preservation. you know what i mean? you're not thinking of anybody else. >> of course. >> but after that i was calm which was the weirdest thing. >> sue, thank you. thank you so very much for being with us and just horrific what sue saw, but every piece of information here adding to the picture of what exactly happened. you heard her saying less than a minute of shooting and then a boom and then more shooting and another boom as you know what was happening, but the shooting

with the kalashnikovs and the suicide bombing and more shooting and another bombing. next, as we follow the breaking news, a terror attack at the major airport. we are live in turk oey on the ground and who is behind this attack and u.s. officials have more information coming in at this hour and we'll go to our reporters on the ground as this comes in. we'll be right back. on honors members save up to 25% on brands like hampton, doubletree, hilton garden inn, and waldorf astoria so stop clicking around. book direct at hilton.com now that's satisfaction. on want younger looking hair in 30 minutes?

schwarzkopf presents our most caring color collection: keratin color with keratin-care-complex. formulated for full gray coverage and up to 80% less hair breakage. ready to rejuvenate your hair? keratin color. from schwarzkopf.

my name is jamir dixon and i'm a locafor pg&e.rk fieldman most people in the community recognize the blue trucks as pg&e. my truck is something new... it's an 811 truck. when you call 811, i come out to your house and i mark out our gas lines and our electric lines to make sure that you don't hit them when you're digging. 811 is a free service. i'm passionate about it because every time i go on the street i think about my own kids. they're the reason that i want to protect our community and our environment, and if me driving a that truck means that somebody gets to go home safer, then i'll drive it every day of the week. together, we're building a better california.

. three suicide bombers striking istanbul's main airport. at this hour, 32 are dead and at least 88 injured and numbers that have been changing and rising throughout these past couple of hours since this horrific news broke. we are just getting in some new video of exactly what happened. we warn you that this is incredibly graphic. you actually see the exact moment the explosion rips through the airport. and everything starts falling, but at that moment you see people are walking and no one in that picture before that video has any expectation that anything is going wrong, even though we understand that before these suicide bombers blew

themselves up they had been shooting with kalashnikovs. officials say at least one of the attackers stormed the airport with an assault rifle and andrew finkel is live outside the airport. i know you've spoken to witnesses what some describe as an apocalyptic scene at that airport. what are you hearing? >> well, there seems to have been an extremely well organized attack and there were three attackers, possibly more and three certainly blew themselves up at various locations outside and possibly inside the airport. there were shots fired and bombs ripped through, taxi drivers waiting to get on the line and suddenly found that the car in front of them was turned into a heap, and of course, this is a huge airport, a huge terminal. many people don't actually go here to visit istanbul and they

go here from who knows? cape town or bangkok on their way to new york or san francisco. so it's a huge transport hub and the airport is crowded day and night. the authority his to evacuate this airport amidst this chaos and it's a dramatic event that's shocked turkey and elsewhere in the world. >> of course. shocking everyone around the world, andrew. i want to go to pamela brown. pamela, i know you've been talking to your sources about exactly what happened here. you hear andrew talking about how extremely well-coordinated this was. what are you hearing about that and who was behind it? >> well, from my sources in the intelligence community, the sense right now, erin, is that this was an isis attack, either inspired or directed or from a turkish isis cell. they're still trying to drill that down, but the officials i've spoken say this has the m.o. of isis. you look at what happened in belgium at the brussels airport.

this is very similar to that. we know that isis likes to pick targets that are symbolic and that make a splash and this would be an attractive target for that and it's the month of ramadan and around the anniversary of the isis caliphate. one official i spoke to said that it would be highly unlikely and highly out of character for this to be the work of the pkk and the other group that we've been talking about as the responsible party and no public claim of responsibility yet. so right now, intelligence officials in the u.s. are going back to their human sources. they are looking at intercepts trying to figure out who is behind this. i'm being told at this stage there is no indication in the u.s., at least, that there was a specific plot targeting this airport, but of course, after something like this happens and they go back and look through the intelligence to see if something was missed. another priority to see if any americans were in that airport. they're working, the u.s.

intelligence agencies are looking over man firsts to see if any american citizens were traveling through the airport at that time trying to catch flights. at this point i'm told they haven't determined if there were u.s. victim, but that is a priority to figure out. >> thank you very much, pamela brown. i want to go to eric swallow of california. you've been briefed on this terror attack and these numbers of dead and wounded in this horrific attack continuing to climb. what are you learning? >> good evening, erin. certainly, our heart goes out to the turkish people and i was just there last year at this time in istanbul talking with turkish officials about fighting isis and the information right now, very limited, but we are looking to see if american gates were targeted. we saw in belgium in the brussels attack that it was american gates where the bombings took place and there's been a targeting of westerners.

so whether this was isis or another extremist group, that will be the first question that we're asking here at home. >> and -- and so it sounds like you don't yet have information on that whether u.s. flights were targeted. we do know it was the international terminal of the airport and that in and of itself is significant. this is the second attack, congressman at an airport in the past three months and we know that the paris attackers had been trying at the time and nobody had heard of such a thing and they'll try to perhaps shoot the departure sefkz charles de gaulle airport and we saw that happen in brussels and it's now happened here. are you concerned that it could happen again? >> very concerned. today isis released a video targeting las vegas and san francisco and so no city in the free world right now is safe from isis and i think what this has to be is a call for nations to put aside that any distractions that are keeping us from coming together to really

root out isis and syria in iraq and right now, frankly, turkey has been distracted by the pkk and they're focused on the pkk and that's been to the detriment of taking on isis and limiting fighters from going through turkey down into syria and iraq. >> congressman, at this hour, do you know anything about possible american casualties? >> not yet. i have certainly asked, and we have an embassy over in ankara and of course, a consulate in istanbul in hoping that no embassy personnel were injured or killed in the attack. >> all right, congressman, thank you very much. and we're continuing to follow this breaking story. at least 28 dead and the death toll rising at this hour. the scene developing in the early morning hours now in istanbul. we'll be back on the ground in a moment. that i'm a horse whisperer. fancy prance, yo!! but you know what else don't make sense?

bai. i mean it's good for you, but still somehow tastes amazing. sideways fancy prance, ya heard!! yeahhhh. clippity clop. clippity clop. yo, i just whispered all of ya'll! too easy. vo: bai. 5 calories, antioxidants and tastes amazing? none of this makes sense. safety doesn't come in a box. it's not a banner that goes on a wall. it's not something you do now and then. or when it's convenient. it's using state-of-the-art simulators to better prepare for any situation. it's giving offshore teams onshore support. and it's empowering anyone to stop a job if something doesn't seem right.

at bp, safety is never being satisfied. and always working to be better. so it most certainly doesn't end...t end at the horizon. at gate c-47. with travelocity, get help through social media 24/7. travelocity® wander wisely™

the death toll rising tonight in a terrorist attack at a major international airport. 32 now dead, 88 wounded. we have new video coming in of the chaotic scene right outside

of the airport during the attack. bodies on the ground. whether these are people hiding, we're not sure. these are people who are perhaps injured. we know at least one of the attackers had an assault rifle. moments later, that individual exploded himself with some sort of a suicide vest that he was wearing. whether it was a belt or a vest, it's unclear. it was most certainly on his person, we can tell you that because you actually see him detonate. i want to go to tom foreman who is looking at the layout of the airport and tom, obviously this a very secure airport and one of the busiest airports in the world and you have to go through security outside. then you have to go through security inside the airport and then what we all in the united states would consider security and they were able to get past perimeter after perimeter. >> a lot of layers for them to get through, right? as ivan mentioned earlier. you have the security on the roads coming in, there's a layer of security trying to get you

into security. they got nowhere near the planes. they did make it to the second layer here and let's look at specifically where we're talking about. you had an eyewitness earlier, erin who talked about where she was. that was somewhere down in this area and that's where one of the explosions occurred and let me show you which one we're talking about and this is that area where people are coming in. it's the lower part of the airport and the lower floor as you see, where you see people greeting people coming in. this is that same area as it was at the time. you see all of the people moving and if we advance it to the actual explosion, you can see it occurs right back in there. so a very busy area and a lot of people there. the second location, however, was in a different part of the airport. a little bit further down. it was down in this area. so removed by some distance there. in each case, maybe 80 feet from the doors inside. so trying to get past that first security area that you mentioned a minute ago. the second one, this was where

we talk about the man being -- running in here with his weapon and the police officer hiding right up in here and he's taken by the police officer and his gun is sliding right over here and when the police officer sees him, the officer runs away and then this bomb goes off. i think all indications is there may not nearly be as many people hurt by this bomb because there's no one here when the bomb goes off. >> this is the aftermath of that area after that happened. you can see what that was like out there and you can see the damage, actually to these windows here around this which looks pretty robust glass there, and then we have the question of the third explosion. we haven't been able to locate that, yet, erin and there's talk that it could be related to this parking deck out here somehow because a lot of people talked about gun fire out here. whether or not there was a third explosion or if it was successful we don't know yet, but that gives you an idea. one, somewhere out here, maybe.

one definitely right in this area and then one right over in here, erin. >> all right, tom foreman, thank you very much. my panel back out front with me now. mitch, when you see this, bob looked at multiple levels of security would have gotten through, the driving and then walking. one of them with an assault rifle and all of them with some sort of a vest or belt or whatever it might have been. does that shock you that that was possible? >> well, i mean, it seems like these people, there's a decent chance they had familiarity with the airport, as well. we know roughly 7,000 european foreign fighters have gone through syria and iraq, the primary transit point would have been through istanbul airport. so a lot of foreign fighters coming in and this being the location that they would first run into in turkey, but then you also have the potential issue that this could have been turkish citizens in their own right who may have gotten radicalized and fought in syria

and come back across the border into turkey. one of the problems with turkey and their strategy with isis is that it's been a porous border. people have been able to cross back and forth pretty much at will. >> when you see this, how much planning do you see that went into this. which was clearly coordinated. >> yeah. >> multiple people, past security and multiple locations. obviously when that man when he was forced to detonate himself did not do it the way he wanted to do it, thank god. obviously, this was planned. >> these guys knew the airport very closely. that scene where the guy blew himself up, i've walked that corridor many, many times. it used to be the case when you wanted to go to syria whether as a reporter or an aspiring fs applier you fly out of ataturk airport and coming out of new york, was there a 13-hour delay, right? and then you have to transfer to the plane in southwestern

turkey. i've flown that plane, we used to call it the jihad i express and you would see the guy with the long beard and it was clear they weren't going off to join a secular activist organization. in recent years, security has gotten much more robust and much more stringent. i have been questioned many times at ataturk within the course of several hours by different security personnel and what are you doing here? how long are you saying? the turks have begun to take it more seriously, but you mentioned coming back across the border. you don't necessarily have to fly there. you can drive from turkey to istanbul. it takes you about 14 hours, butio you can do it. >> you talk about jihadi express. it's a fluid situation because we know what we know right now, but we still don't know, for example, whether there were others, whether there was someone else who was a part of it and who may have escaped and we have no idea beyond there were at least three. yes, erin. you know what distausurbs me ab

this attack besides casualties and victims about this is the turkish police are very good and the intelligence service is sensitized to this, they have a lot of people infiltrating these groups and yet three people were able to evade their security and get through probably one of the best protected airports in the world. certainly better protected than american airports and what does this is a about the stability of turkey? they're fighting a civil war against the kurds. they're fighting -- they have a big war on their border that's not going away any time soon and now they have the islamic state, maybe the islamic state attacking targets like istanbul airport and we have to be concerned about the future. what's next? >> and juliette, what about that what's next? we've gotten a high-visibility border police in new york city airports as just an example. >> yeah. there's no question when something like this happens at an international airport you will see a surge by every major u.s. city across this country.

we are entering july fourth weekend, left we forget. it is always a high-security moment because there are lots of groupings and lots of people together, and i think you are going to see every mayor come out with a surge of police and other sort of security personnel. it's just just security theater. it's to ensure that people feel secure being out and about. on the airport security side, i know they've deployed their emergency operational outreach to all of the airlines. there were ten flights already en route from turkey to the u.s. those are all accounted for and fine, and those are the kinds of procedures that the u.s. puts in place when something like this happens. >> thanks very much to all of you. our breaking news coverage continues, as we take a very brief break, i want to update you now. 31 now, the official death toll and 147 injured and the journalist who just landed at the airport just moments after the explosion will be my guest after this.

>> breaking news. terror at the airport. at least 31 dead and 147 wounded after three suicide bombers blew themselves up at one of the world's busiest airports in turkey. the chilling new video appears to be the moment that one of the bombers detonated himself inside the airport in istanbul. the attacker on the ground seconds before the explosion. his gun has skidded across the floor and then the detonation.

potosh khorasan was at the airport. what did you see? >> hello. that was a really bad experience. we had just landed and we picked up our cellular phones and picked up a news alert, and no details there and maybe we will stay and wait on the plane, but somehow they got us out and we were transferred to the main terminal, and you could see that there was something awkward because no planes were landing and it was an empty airport. we went in, elevators were not working and then we started to walk past airport control. everything was blocked, and i saw people screaming and running. we didn't understand what was happening, but you know, the fear started to build up, and we sat down, read the news and talked over the phone and in the meantime, some other passengers

were brought in, and some started to find a place to smoke, et cetera, and after 45 minutes they let us out, and i could see on the face of all of the passport police officers that something terrible had happened, and which i realized coming out -- and i'm a frequent traveler. i pass through all those places regularly, and all i saw was terrible debris and blood stains on the uniforms of police officers. they were quite orderly. they were taking us out, but it was really a terrible feeling. we went out and then i realized even more how terrible it had been and there were no cars, no taxis. we went to the parking space and we had to walk, like a kilometer to find a vehicle. >> yes. >> luckily in my group of friends someone had parked their car in a parking place nearby

and he took us out and we got a cab, but you know, i was listening to a program as one of our colleagues mentioned and it was really an apocalyptic feeling. it was a bad feeling. i had that feeling after the earthquake in turkey. you really feel helpless and you don't know. you don't understand. it's absurd. it's a shock. it's a bad feeling, really, i can guarantee you that. fatos, thank you very much for sharing with us. the stories are horrific and the blood on the uniforms of police and how they were trying to do their jobs and help others to safety. our breaking news coverage continues after this. the big hilton world sale is on honors members save up to 25% on brands like hampton, doubletree, hilton garden inn, and waldorf astoria so stop clicking around. book direct at hilton.com now that's satisfaction.

amazing sleep stays with you all day and all night. sleep number beds with sleepiq technology give you the knowledge to adjust for the best sleep ever. don't miss the lowest prices of the season going on now, with our best-buy rated c2 queen mattress now only $699.99. know better sleep. only at a sleep number store.

thanks for joining us. our breaking news coverage continues right now of the horrific terror attack at ataturk international in istanbul with "a.c. 360" and anderson right now. good evening. thanks very much for joining us on this difficult evening. we are devoting much of the next two hours to late developments out of istanbul, turkey, where the death poll is climbing now. at least 31 people known dead after suicide bombers -- the killer found a soft spot and we do have video of the attacks in progress. the video is graphic. if you have children in the room, get them out. you see the gunman racing through the terminal there. we will put a circle around him. he was shot, what appears to be a police officer who is now just above him now. he is laying on the ground. the police officer appears to shoot him again at close