Images show ISIL militants scouting Istanbul mall while plotting attack

Çetin Aydın – ISTANBUL

Images have surfaced showing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants scouting near a shopping mall in Istanbul while planning attacks.

Security footage shared by counter-terrorism police revealed that the bomb-laden car, which was planned to be used to carry out a massacre at the Forum Istanbul mall in Istanbul’s Bayrampaşa district, was spotted on different dates.

One of the images showed that a man was driving the car with a woman and child next to him. The second image showed a man driving the car with a woman next to him and a child in the backseat. The final image showed a woman driving the car and another woman sitting next to her.

The man who was driving the car has reportedly been identified and was detained by police.

Recent wide-scale anti-ISIL operations revealed that members of the jihadist group planned to attack the Forum Istanbul mall and its parking lot before donning suicide vests and staging suicide attacks targeting people rushing to help victims of the blasts.