Thank you for having followed our live coverage of the events in Istanbul.

Here is how things stand as we wrap up on Wednesday afternoon:

• Three gunmen attacked Istanbul's Ataturk airport, the biggest in Turkey, on Tuesday evening and detonated explosives when police shot at them
• The death toll has risen to 41, of whom most were Turkish nationals - 13 foreigners also died
• 239 people were injured and nearly half of them have already left hospital
• Investigators are examining CCTV footage and mobile phone videos to piece together what one official called a "jigsaw puzzle"
• Nobody has claimed the attack yet
• Turkey's prime minister says early indications are that the so-called Islamic State group is responsible - they've criticised the Turkish government for allying with the US-led coalition against them
• The US government, Pope Francis, the head of Nato and the Belgian prime minister were among those to condemn the attack
• Russia's President Putin offered condolences to Turkey's President Erdogan this morning, the first time they've spoken since Turkey shot a Russian military jet in November

For more details, see the BBC's main story.

Tuesday's assault brings to 132 the number of people killed in attacks in Turkey so far this year.

The BBC's online Europe editor Paul Kirby writes that a country that used to be "a beacon of stability" has now entered "a period of high tension, fighting Kurdish militants in its restive east and struggling to prevent Islamist militant violence spreading from across its border with Syria".

Read more here.

After being stuck on a plane that arrived in Istanbul last night, the BBC's Turkey correspondent Mark Lowen is back at Ataturk airport.

He's reporting on the reasons why Turkey has been targeted, if it is indeed the so-called Islamic State who have carried out the attack:

• Turkey is a key partner in the US-led coalition against the so-called Islamic State and is a Nato member
• The country has a 500-mile (800km) long border with Syria and a 200-mile border with Iraq - IS cells may have been able to get in from areas the group controls
• A Kurdish militant insurgency has grown in the south-east of Turkey in the past year, meaning Turkey faces a double threat

Image source, Samira Mohamed Abdi

Samira Mohamed Abdi was in transit in Turkey with her family when the attack happened.

She told the BBC Somali service that, in the rush to hide after the first explosion, her 13-year-old daughter went missing.

The girl’s grandfather then rushed out to find her.

He couldn’t see her – but 20 minutes later, Samira received a call.

She said it took Aisha time to find someone who spoke English to help her, so she could get in touch.    

A commentary in the pro-secular Turkish daily newspaper Haberturk has criticised what it calls failings that lead to terrorist attacks,

The World at One
BBC Radio 4

At least 41 people are believed to have died and more than 230 injured in a bomb explosion at Ataturk airport in Istanbul on Tuesday night.

The Turkish government say they believe militants from the so-called Islamic State are behind the attack, although no one has yet claimed responsibility.

It is the latest in a wave of terror attacks to hit Turkey this year.

The World at One's Hugh Sykes is in Istanbul's city centre with the Turkish newspaper columnist and author, Mustafa Akyol.

The BBC's transport correspondent has told the BBC's News at One programme that although the attack started before the security checks - like the Brussels attack in March - it might be counter-productive to bring the checks closer to the front doors of airports.

He said: "You might think, well OK, let's move these checks further away from the airports, that does happen in some countries around the world.

"They did that in the 1980s at Heathrow after the Lockerbie bomb. I spoke to the man behind that and he said it made the problem worse, because actually you have a big gathering of people away from the airport, on pavements, and they're just as vulnerable if not more vulnerable than they are inside the airport.

"Really the way you stop these things is through intelligence, through finding out they're going to happen in advance.

"You can also train more staff to look out for suspicious circumstances and you can have face recognition on CCTV but there is a limit to what you can do."

The prime minister of Belgium has tweeted his condemnation of the attack in Istanbul.

Charles Michel says he condemns "these atrocious acts of violence".

Just over three months ago, three bombers attacked Brussels airport and a Metro station, killing 32 people.

The attackers also died.

The so-called Islamic State group said it was behind the Belgium attacks, and links emerged between them and the attack on Paris in November, where gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people.

Footage from surveillance cameras shows the moment one of the explosions happened, inside the airport.

Passengers run for cover and some crouch down to avoid the force of the blast and the smoke.

The Turkish government says the three attackers arrived in a taxi before shooting people dead in the airport building. They blew themselves up after coming under fire from the police.

An official says the authorities are looking through CCTV footage and interviewing witnesses to establish the details of the "jigsaw puzzle".

The same official said earlier that none of the attackers had got through the security checks at the entrance, so two of the suicide bombings happened inside while the other was outside the building, in a car park.

The BBC has put together a map showing what is believed to be the location of each of the bombs inside the airport.

Addressing MPs in the House of Commons, British Prime Minister David Cameron said: "You will join me in condemning the horrific terrorist attacks in Turkey last night. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who were killed and injured and their families

"As yet there are no reports of any UK casualties but the Foreign Office are working urgently with the Turkish authorities to establish the full facts.

"We stand in defiance as one against these barbaric acts."

The funerals for some of the victims of the Ataturk airport attack have begun in Turkey.

By Muslim tradition, people should be buried as soon as possible after death.

Image source, AFP

Siddik Turgan was one of the first to be buried in Istanbul on Wednesday. He was a customs official at the airport.

His daughter reached after her father's coffin as the funeral procession passed by.  

Image source, AFP

 Taxi driver Mustafa Biyikli was also buried on Wednesday.

Image source, EPA

Image source, AFP

Local media, external (in Turkish) published a list of names of the dead.  

Image source, reuters

Turkey has declared Wednesday a day of national mourning. The government ordered that flags should fly at half mast.

It is an international hub, and became the third-busiest airport in Europe in 2015. 

Airports Council International says Ataturk airport was the 11th busiest airport in the world last year, with 61.8 million passengers. It is also one of the fastest-growing airports in the world, seeing 9.2% more passengers last year than in 2014.    

On Wednesday morning, destinations listed on the website's departures section included Tehran in Iran, Munich in Germany, Casablanca in Morocco, Toulouse, Nice and Lyon in France, and Zaporozhye in Ukraine.

Some of the flights had been cancelled or delayed due to the airport being closed during and after the attack on Tuesday evening.

Image source, ataturkairport.com

The airport re-opened shortly after 10:00 local time (07:00 GMT) on Wednesday, 12 hours after the attack.

Istanbul is not the capital of Turkey - that's Ankara - but it's by far the country's biggest city. About 14 million people live there.

An Iraqi journalist and activist, Steven Nabil, tweeted that he and his new wife were caught up in the attack. They were on their way back from their honeymoon and sheltered from the shooting inside a cupboard in a hairdresser's shop.

Mr Nabil says they pair were like "sitting ducks" and kept boiling water at hand in case a gunman opened the door.

He said it was the "longest 45 minutes ever".

In a mid-day blessing at the Vatican, Pope Francis has spoken out against what he called the "brutal terrorist attack'' in Istanbul.

He said he was praying for the victims, their families "and the dear Turkish people", and asked the assembled crowd to pray in silence.

Image source, reuters

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said the Russian President Vladimir Putin "expresses condolences to the Turkish people" over the airport attack.

He said Mr Putin had spoken to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by telephone on Wednesday morning.

Turkish presidential sources say the phone call was "very productive and positive".

It was the first time the leaders had spoken by phone since November when the Turkish military shot down a Russian plane on the Syrian border. Moscow announced a package of sanctions against Turkey after that incident, including the suspension of a Black Sea pipeline that was to provide Russian gas to Turkey.

But relations were already thawing. Earlier this week President Erdogan apologised for the incident, the Kremlin has said.

A Turkish official has been giving details of the nationalities of 13 foreigners killed in the Istanbul airport attack. 

They were:

• five from Saudi Arabia
• two from Iraq 
• one from China 
• one from Jordan 
• one from Tunisia 
• one from Uzbekistan 
• one from Iran 
• one from Ukraine

Istanbul's governor now says 41 people have died, up from the earlier death toll of 36.

Another 239 people were injured, of whom more than 100 have already been discharged from hospital.

He says 13 of the dead were foreign nationals, including three with dual nationality.

We earlier reported that one Ukrainian person and one Iranian person were among the dead.

BBC Monitoring

Turkey's prime minister has said early indications are that the so-called Islamic State (IS) group is responsible.

But IS has not claimed the attack.

It has claimed a number of assassinations of Syrian activists in southern Turkey since January, including earlier attacks for which it had not previously claimed credit.

But it has not claimed responsibility for any other attacks on Turkish soil that have been widely attributed to it.  

The group has upped its rhetoric against the Turkish government recently. Since the beginning of this calendar year it has condemned the Turkish authorities and condoned the killing of military and security personnel in its Turkish magazine (issued in January and April).

In its output, IS has strongly criticised the Turkish authorities for its alliances with the US and others as well as for its support of non-IS Syrian opposition. In its news updates it has referred to Turkey more frequently in posts on fighting in northern Syria.