Turkey Night Club Attack
Turkey has arrested a number of people of Uighur ethnicity over a deadly nightclub attack that killed 39, the state-run news agency reports. Those detained are believed to have come from China's Xinjiang region with ties to the attacker, Anadolu says.Deputy PM Veysi Kaynak also said they were closing in on the gunman, who he said was possibly an ethnic Uighur. Also on Thursday, there was an explosion near the courthouse in the city of Izmir in western Turkey. Social media images showed two cars ablaze and several people were reported wounded.
Other images showed what appeared to be the body of a man carrying a gun, amid media reports he was an attacker who was shot dead by police. Anadolu said a second man was shot dead and police had been seeking a 3rd.
'Assisting and Abetting'
So-known as Islamic nation (IS) says it executed the Istanbul assault over Turkey's military involvement within the Syrian civil conflict.
The authorities have reportedly tightened safety at Turkey's land borders and airports to prevent the attacker from fleeing the united states of America.
Turkish media have run photographs of a suspect, announcing the pix have been passed out by using the police. however the police have given no official info.
The Turkish overseas minister has said the government have identified the attacker, however has not given further details.
special forces made the early morning arrests at a housing complex in Selimpasa, a coastal town on the outskirts of Istanbul, after police had been reportedly tipped off that individuals connected to the attacker had been inside the location.
Uighurs were amongst those arrested - the range turned into no longer confirmed - on suspicion of "assisting and abetting" the gunman, Anadolu stated.
at the least 36 human beings have been already in custody over suspected links to the assault, lots of whom have been picked up in an in advance police operation in Izmir.
several families had currently travelled there from Konya, a vital metropolis in which the main suspect changed into said to have stayed for several weeks earlier than the assault.
Who are the Uighurs?
The Uighurs are a Turkic ethnic institution who're specially Muslims, mainly residing in the Xinjiang Uighur independent vicinity in China. Their language is associated with Turkish and a widespread Uighur diaspora lives in Turkey.
a few Uighurs have complained for years approximately persecution at the hands of the chinese language authorities. Al-Qaeda has lengthy-advanced links with Uighur jihadists - known as the Turkestan Islamic party (TIP) - and has offered them army training in Afghanistan.
Uighur jihadists seem to have joined the combating in Syria in extraordinarily large numbers, alongside both Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS, formerly al-Qaeda's Syrian department al-Nusra) and al-Qaeda's competitors, the so-referred to as Islamic state (IS).
they have got featured in IS propaganda and the group's mag, Rumiyah, has been published in Uighur, together with English and a number different languages.
It is believed Uighurs make their way to Kyrgyzstan through the mountains between Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang. Once in Kyrgyzstan, they fly to Turkey using forged Kyrgyz passports.
Separately, Mr Kaynak told Turkish broadcaster A Hamer that the authorities knew where the suspect, who he described as "specially trained", was hiding, without giving further details. He confirmed the gunman had acted alone, but may have had help inside the nightclub.
Witnesses to the new year attack said more than 100 rounds of bullets were fired which, the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardener says, indicates the gunman had at least some rudimentary military training.
Mr Kaynak expressed confidence in the Turkish police operation but said he could not rule out the possibility of the attacker fleeing the country.
No Kyrgyz connection previous media reports incorrectly suggested the culprit was a national from Kyrgyzstan, after a passport photo claiming to show the attacker was circulated. It later emerged the passport belonged to someone unrelated to the attack.
Kyrgyzstan's embassy in Turkey has since asked the media to retract the reports and issue an apology. More than half of those killed in Sunday's attack on Istanbul's popular Reina nightclub were foreigners, including citizens from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq and Morocco. The gunman managed to escape in the aftermath of the attack.
A day later, IS issued a statement saying "a heroic soldier" belonging to the group had carried out the attack in retaliation for Turkey's military role in northern Syria.
Mr Kaynak also said on Thursday Turks were questioning the use of the country's Incirlik air base by both Nato and the US-led coalition launching air strikes on IS in Syria and Iraq.
Turkey launched a military operation in Syria in August to push back IS and Kurdish forces. Some of Turkey's big cities have since been targeted in a number of bomb attacks by IS and by Kurdish militants.
