Singapore runner misses Istanbul attack by half an hour

Photo courtesy of Dipna Lim-Prasad

Singapore national runner Dipna Lim-Prasad landed at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport on Wednesday morning (29 June) without realising that about half an hour earlier, suicide bombers had blown themselves up in the international terminal of the building.

The 25-year-old had been in Portugal for a month for a training stint and was supposed to fly to Singapore in a Turkish Airlines plane when it made a transit stop in Istanbul.

An in-flight announcement said there had been an “emergency” and that passengers could not disembark. She later found out that a terror attack had happened at the airport on Tuesday night through text messages from her friends. “So we just waited in the plane for a few hours before we could leave for the terminal,” she told Yahoo Singapore by text message.

Inside the terminal, it was a nine-hour wait for her and her team before they were re-booked on a flight to Singapore. Lim-Prasad showed Yahoo Singapore a photo of a crowd of passengers surrounding airport staff and paid tribute to the staff for their resilience.

“I think everyone was just trying to get on top of things. I feel for the staff though to have such an awful thing happen in their country and where they work no less and then to have to work and take care of us passengers,” Lim-Prasad said.

At least 36 people were killed and 150 injured at Ataturk airport after three suicide bombers blew themselves up. Turkey’s prime minister Binali Yildirim believes the Islamic State is behind the attack.

While in the plane, she posted a photo on her social media accounts of herself and Luis Cunha, national coach for sprints, relays and hurdles with the caption, “We are safe”.

At the time that she spoke to Yahoo Singapore, she and her team were in a hotel waiting to return to the airport.

As of 2:20am Turkey time, the airport had resumed operations.

Lim-Prasad will depart for Singapore Wednesday night.