ANKARA: Turkey on Monday confirmed that Hayat Boumeddiene, the wanted partner of one of the gunmen behind the terror attacks in France, traveled through Turkey last week on her way to Syria.

“She entered Turkey on Jan. 2 from Madrid. There are images of her at the airport,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by Anatolia.

Cavusoglu said the 26-year-old, who married gunman Amedy Coulibaly in an Islamic ceremony, stayed at a hotel in Kadikoy on the Asian side of Istanbul and was accompanied by another person. She then crossed into Syria on Jan. 8, according to her phone records, Cavusoglu said, without making clear if she traveled to Syria on her own.

A Turkish security source on Saturday had also told AFP that Boumeddiene had entered Turkey on Jan. 2 and was believed to have moved on to the southeastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa and then to Syria. But Turkey did not arrest her because of a lack of timely intelligence from France, the source said.

Cavusoglu’s comments confirm that Boumeddiene was already outside France when the killing spree began, contrary to earlier speculation that she had been involved in the Paris killings in which 17 people died.