Tag Archives: Terrorist Attack

Security tightened at UK sites in New York after London attack

A New York City Police (NYPD) Counter Terrorism officer patrols in Times Square in New York City, U.S., March 22, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

By Laila Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York police ramped up security at British sites across the city on Wednesday after an assailant fatally stabbed a policeman outside Britain’s parliament and was then shot and killed by police.

Heavily armed officers and explosives-detecting dogs were deployed to locations including the British Consulate and the British Mission to the United Nations in Manhattan, senior New York Police Department officials told a news conference.

“You’ll see a larger presence of the dogs at these locations, as well as (officers) armed with the long guns,” said James Waters, the police department’s counterterrorism chief.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill said that while authorities were concerned about copycat attacks, there was no specific threat to New York City on Wednesday.

Outside the British Consulate, officers stood guard wearing helmets and tactical vests and carrying semi-automatic rifles. Several police cars were parked nearby, their lights flashing.

Police long-gun teams were also deployed to New York’s City Hall and Grand Central Station, the department said.

Four people died and at least 20 were injured in London after a car plowed into pedestrians and an attacker stabbed a policeman close to parliament in what police called a “marauding terrorist attack.”

New York police previously boosted security at prominent sites around the city after large-scale attacks in Paris, Brussels and San Bernardino, California, out of an abundance of caution.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it would lend support to Britain’s investigation of the attack but that the U.S. security posture was unchanged.

“We are in close contact with our British counterparts to monitor the tragic events and to support the ongoing investigation,” the department said in a statement.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Additional reporting by Timothy Ahmann in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Peter Cooney)

Four dead, others injured in UK parliament ‘terrorist’ attack

An air ambulance lands in Parliament Square during an incident on Westminster Bridge in London. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

By Toby Melville and William James

LONDON (Reuters) – Four people were killed and at least 20 injured in London on Wednesday after a car plowed into pedestrians and an attacker stabbed a policeman close to the British parliament, in what police called a terrorist incident.

The dead included the assailant and the policeman he stabbed, while the other two victims were among the pedestrians hit by the car as it tore along Westminster Bridge, which is right next to parliament.

“We’ve declared this as a terrorist incident and the counter-terrorism command are carrying out a full-scale investigation into the events today,” Mark Rowley, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, told reporters.

“The attack started when a car was driven over Westminster Bridge, hitting and injuring a number of members of the public, also including three police officers on their way back from a commendation ceremony.

“A car then crashed near to parliament and at least one man, armed with a knife continued the attack and tried to enter parliament.”

Reuters reporters who were inside parliament at the time heard loud bangs and shortly afterwards saw the knifeman and the stabbed policeman lying on the ground in a courtyard just outside, within the gated perimeter of the parliamentary estate.

A Reuters photographer said he saw at least a dozen people injured on the bridge. His photographs showed people lying on the ground, some of them bleeding heavily and one under a bus.

A woman was pulled alive, but with serious injuries, from the Thames, the Port of London Authority said. The circumstances of her fall into the river were unclear.

Three French schoolchildren aged 15 or 16 were among those injured in the attack, French officials said.

The attack took place on the first anniversary of attacks by Islamist militants that killed 32 people in Brussels.

PARLIAMENT SESSION SUSPENDED

“I just saw a car go out of control and just go into pedestrians on the bridge,” eyewitness Bernadette Kerrigan told Sky News. She was on a tour bus on the bridge at the time.

“As we were going across the bridge, we saw people lying on the floor, they were obviously injured. I saw about 10 people maybe. And then the emergency services started to arrive. Everyone was just running everywhere.”

The House of Commons, which was in session at the time, was immediately suspended and lawmakers were asked to stay inside.

Prime Minister Theresa May was safe after the incident, a spokesman for her office said. He declined to say where May was when the attack took place.

Journalist Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail newspaper told LBC radio that he had witnessed the stabbing of the policeman and the shooting of the assailant from his office in the parliament building.

“He (the assailant) ran in through the open gates … He set about one of the policemen with what looked like a stick,” Letts said.

“The policeman fell over on the ground and it was quite horrible to watch and then having done that, he disengaged and ran towards the House of Commons entrance used by MPs (members of parliament) and got about 20 yards or so when two plain-clothed guys with guns shot him.”

Britain is on its second-highest alert level of “severe” meaning an attack by militants is considered highly likely.

In May 2013, two British Islamists stabbed to death soldier Lee Rigby on a street in southeast London.

In July 2005, four British Islamists killed 52 commuters and themselves in suicide bombings on the British capital’s transport system in what was London’s worst peacetime attack.

(Additional reporting by Kylie Maclellan, Elizabeth Piper, Costas Pitas, Alistair Smout, Michael Holden, Kate Holton, Elisabeth O’Leary and London bureau, writing by Estelle Shirbon, editing by Stephen Addison, Mark Trevelyan and Guy Faulconbridge)

Scottish parliament suspends independence debate after London attack

A police car is parked outside the Scottish Parliament following suspension of the referendum debate in Edinburgh Scotland, Britain March 22, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Cheyne

EDINBURGH (Reuters) – Scotland’s devolved parliament suspended a planned vote on Wednesday to give its government a mandate to seek a new independence referendum after an attack on Britain’s Houses of Parliament in London which police said they were treating as a terrorist incident.

No date for the debate to resume was given.

The Scottish parliament issued a statement saying it would increase security measures, although no specific threat to Scotland had been detected.

London’s permission for a new Scottish referendum is needed because any legally binding vote on United Kingdom constitutional matters has to be authorized by the UK parliament.

Prime Minister Theresa May has not completely ruled out another Scottish independence vote but has vowed to fight for what she has called the “precious union” of the United Kingdom.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who argues that Scotland’s vote to keep its EU membership in last June’s referendum has been ignored in May’s Brexit arrangements so far, is seeking authority for a second referendum from the Scottish parliament, to be held in late 2018 or early 2019.

(Reporting by Elisabeth O’Leary; editing by Stephen Addison)

One shot, several injured in UK parliament ‘terrorist incident’

Police tapes off Parliament Square after reports of loud bangs, in London, Britain, March 22, 2017. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

By Toby Melville

LONDON (Reuters) – A policeman was stabbed, an assailant shot and several people injured on Wednesday close to Britain’s Houses of Parliament in what police said they were treating as a terrorist incident.

Reuters reporters inside the building heard loud bangs and shortly afterwards a Reuters photographer said he saw at least a dozen people injured on Westminster Bridge, next to parliament.

His photographs showed people lying on the ground, some of them bleeding heavily and one apparently under a bus. The number of casualties was unclear.

“Officers – including firearms officers – remain on the scene and we are treating this as a terrorist incident until we know otherwise,” London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

The House of Commons, which was in session at the time, was immediately suspended and lawmakers were asked to stay inside.

Prime Minister Theresa May was safe after the incident, a spokesman for her office said. He declined to say where May was when the attack took place.

The leader of the House, David Lidington, said in the chamber that an assailant who stabbed a policeman had been shot by police.

An ambulance helicopter landed on Parliament Square, just outside the building.

The BBC said police believed there was a suspect vehicle outside parliament but police did not immediately confirm that report.

Amid confusing scenes, it appeared the incident may have unfolded in several locations, including on the busy Westminster bridge where tourists take pictures of Big Ben and other attractions.

Reuters reporters inside parliament said a large number of armed police, some carrying shields, were pouring into the building.

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House he had been briefed on events in London but gave no details.

The incident took place on the first anniversary of attacks on Brussels in Belgium.

Britain is on its second-highest alert level of “severe” meaning an attack by militants is considered highly likely.

In May 2013, two British Islamists stabbed to death soldier Lee Rigby on a street in southeast London.

In July 2005, four British Islamists killed 52 commuters and themselves in suicide bombings on the British capital’s transport system in what was London’s worst peacetime attack.

(Additional reporting by William James, Kylie Maclellan, Elizabeth Piper and UK bureau, writing by Estelle Shirbon, editing by Stephen Addison)

Year on from bombings, Brussels remains on alert

People take part in a rally called "The march against the fear, Tous Ensemble, Samen Een, All Together" in memory for the victims of bomb attacks in Brussels metro and Brussels international airport of Zaventem, in Brussels, Belgium, April 17, 2016. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Alastair Macdonald

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A year after Islamic State suicide bombers killed 32 people in Brussels, Belgian authorities say much remains unclear about who ordered the attacks, even if those who staged them are either dead or in jail.

The March 22 bloodshed in Brussels hit Zaventem airport and a metro train, coming four months after bombings and shootings in Paris that killed 130 people. Both sets of attacks were carried out by related cells of young Muslims, some of whom had returned from fighting in Syria.

Since then, Belgium has remained on high alert as it tries to curtail threats both at home and from militants who may return from the Middle East.

“We will only have certainty when the situation in Syria and Iraq is resolved,” one senior official said of the inquiries into the Brussels attacks. Those two countries have attracted over 400 Belgians to join the ranks of Islamist militants, according to a study by the Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism.

That figure makes Belgium one of the biggest contributors to foreign jihadists in the Middle East in proportion to its population.

As the Belgian capital prepares to mark Wednesday’s anniversary with ceremonies timed to the moment the bombers struck, authorities are still unsure just who in the IS group organized and ordered the attacks, even though 59 people are in custody and 60 on bail.

The most recent arrest was in January, of a man suspected of providing forged identity papers to Khalid El Bakraoui, the 27-year-old suicide bomber who killed 16 people on a train at the downtown Maelbeek metro station.

With soldiers still a permanent presence around Brussels’ transportation hubs, security officials told reporters in briefings ahead of the anniversary that there was still a risk that armed militants were still at large.

For Belgian security services, some communities can remain hard to penetrate, such as the tight-knit Muslim neighborhood of Molenbeek where the prime suspect of the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, hid near his family home for four months. His arrest triggered his associates to strike Brussels four days later.

Despite efforts to detect and discourage the influence of violent Islamist ideas, young men who engaged in petty crime remain vulnerable to it, officials said. But surveillance over potential jihadists has intensified in the past year, they added

Only five Belgians were detected trying to leave for Syria last year, with only one succeeding, officials said, marking a contrast from the previous years.

That, however, has raised concerns, a senior security official told reporters, since Islamic State appeared to be issuing instructions to followers to “attack infidels at home”.

Some 160 Belgian citizens remain in Syria, officials estimate, but some 80 children have been born to them there, creating fears of a new risk.

“These children could be tomorrow’s danger,” the official said. “They’ve seen atrocities, they’ve been brainwashed. Some of them already received military training. We really have to work with them on their return.”

(Reporting by Alastair Macdonald and Robert-Jan Bartunek; Edited by Vin Shahrestani; @macdonaldrtr)

Retiree and volunteer fireman among Florida airport shooting fatalities

People on the airport ramp area near terminals 1 and 2 are seen following a shooting incident at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida,

By Gina Cherelus

(Reuters) – A volunteer firefighter in his sixties and a retiree en route to a cruise ship vacation with her husband were among the five travelers fatally gunned down during Friday’s airport attack in Florida, according to relatives and friends.

Authorities have not named any of the victims of the rampage in a crowded baggage claim area at Fort Lauderdale’s airport, which also left six others shot and dozens more with injuries suffered in the chaos as people fled.

But a picture of some of those killed began to emerge on Saturday from local media reports and in testimonials by family and friends.

Terry Andres, a volunteer fireman from Virginia Beach, Virginia, was at the airport to go on vacation with his wife, his daughter told local broadcaster WAVY-TV.

She said he would have been celebrating his 63rd birthday later this month. He was shot multiple times, WAVY-TV reported, but his wife of 40 years was not hurt.

Andres had served since 2004 with the Oceana Volunteer Fire Department, where he was remembered fondly.

“He was well liked and respected for both his dedication to being a volunteer as well as his professional approach to his job as a support tech,” the department said in a statement on Saturday. “We mourn his passing as we do all the victims of the senseless attack in Ft. Lauderdale.”

Another of those killed was Olda Woltering, a retiree from Marietta, Georgia who was on vacation with her husband Ralph, according to people who recalled her as a prominent figure at the city’s Transfiguration Catholic Church.

“She was a wonderful wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother and friend,” said Chip Oudt, a fellow churchgoer who said they had been close. “She will be missed.”

Woltering joined the church with her husband in 1978. Others who worshipped there described her as always happy.

“Olga was so charming, calling everybody ‘Lovey’ or ‘Love’ in her unmistakable British accent,” church officials said in a statement. “Her life revolved around her kids, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and hundreds of extended family at Transfiguration.”

A third fatality was Michael Oehme of Council Bluffs, Iowa. He had also been on his way to take a cruise ship vacation with his wife when he was shot.

His wife, Kari Oehme, was shot in the shoulder and will survive, according to Omaha television station WOWT.

Mark Lea, a witness who told the station he saw the couple at the scene, recalled running to help the victims.

“Did not know her any way, shape or form,” Lea said of Kari Oehme. “I saw that she was down and injured in a pool of blood, which was hers and just stopped to help and console her and kind of minimize her from going further into shock.”

Authorities say three of the six victims taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds are in intensive care, while the others are in good condition. They have not given more details.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Chris Reese)

Gun was given back to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida shooting suspect last month

Workers prepare airplanes on the tarmac at Ft. Lauderdale International Airport after it re-opened following a mass shooting in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

By Zachary Fagenson

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Reuters) – Police in Alaska took a handgun from the man accused of killing five people at Fort Lauderdale’s airport on Friday, but they returned it to him last month after a medical evaluation found he was not mentally ill, authorities said on Saturday.

Esteban Santiago, a 26-year-old Iraq war veteran, had a history of acting erratically and investigators are probing whether mental illness played a role in the latest U.S. mass shooting. According to court papers, he told agents he planned the attack and bought a one-way ticket to Florida.

Santiago was charged on Saturday in federal court and could potentially face the death penalty if convicted in the case, U.S. prosecutors said.

Marlin Ritzman, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s office in Anchorage, told a news conference Santiago walked into the office in November and said his mind was being controlled by a U.S. intelligence agency. He was turned over to local police, who took him to a medical facility for a mental evaluation.

“Santiago was having terroristic thoughts and believed he was being influenced by ISIS (the Islamic State militant group,)” Anchorage Police Chief Chris Tolley told the news conference.

A handgun police took from Santiago during the evaluation was returned to him early last month, Tolley told reporters. The police chief said it was not clear if it was the same weapon used on Friday.

Officials in Anchorage said the gun was returned because Santiago had not been adjudicated to be mentally ill.

“As far as I know, this is not somebody that would have been prohibited (from having a gun) based on the information they had,” U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler told the news conference.

Investigators said they have not ruled out terrorism as a motive and that the suspect’s recent travel is being reviewed.

Federal prosecutors charged Santiago with carrying out violence at an airport, causing serious bodily injury, using a firearm during a crime of violence and causing death to a person through the use of a firearm, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

He will appear in court in Fort Lauderdale on Monday.

Five people were killed and six wounded in the rampage, while about three dozen were taken to local hospitals with bruises or broken bones suffered in the chaos as passengers fled the crowded baggage claim area.

‘METHODICAL’ SHOOTING

Authorities say Santiago arrived in Ft. Lauderdale on a connecting flight from Alaska and retrieved a Walther 9mm semi-automatic handgun from his checked luggage before loading it in a bathroom and shooting indiscriminately.

According to the criminal complaint, Santiago fired the weapon 10 to 15 times, aiming it at his victims’ heads.

“He was described as walking while shooting in a methodical manner,” the complaint said.

Witnesses said the gunman, who was wearing a blue “Star Wars” T-shirt, said nothing as he fired and surrendered to police only after running out of ammunition.

The Broward County sheriff has said it took the first deputy about 70 to 80 seconds to contact the suspect after the first shots rang out and that when the deputy confronted him, he dropped the gun and was taken into custody.

Authorities said three of the six victims who suffered gunshot wounds are in intensive care. The others are in good condition. Those killed included a volunteer firefighter in his sixties and a retiree on holiday with her husband.

Santiago served from 2007 to 2016 in the Puerto Rico National Guard and Alaska National Guard, including a deployment to Iraq from 2010 to 2011, according to the Pentagon.

A private first class and combat engineer, he received half a dozen medals before being transferred to the inactive ready reserve in August last year.

An aunt said Santiago returned from his deployment “a different person,” MSNBC reported.

Santiago’s brother Bryan, who lives in Puerto Rico, told CNN he believed authorities did not do enough to help his mentally ill sibling.

“They had him hospitalized for four days, and then they let him go. How are you going to let someone leave a psychological center after four days when he is saying that he is hearing voices?” Bryan Santiago told CNN.

The attack was the latest in a series of U.S. mass shootings, some inspired by Islamist militants, others carried out by loners or the mentally disturbed.

Last June, Florida was the scene of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, when a gunman apparently inspired by Islamic State killed 49 people and wounded 53 at the gay nightclub “Pulse” in Orlando.

(Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Alex Dobunzinskis in Los Angeles, and Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)

At least four dead in Palestinian truck attack in Jerusalem

Rescue workers carry the body of a victim from the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem

By Jeffrey Heller and Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem on Sunday, killing four of them in an attack that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said is likely to have been inspired by Islamic State.

It was the deadliest Palestinian attack in Jerusalem in months and targeted officer cadets as they disembarked from a bus that brought them to the Armon Hanatziv promenade, which has a panoramic view of the walled Old City.

The military said that a female officer and three officer cadets were killed and that 17 others were injured. Police said three of the dead were women.

Israeli soldiers work at the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem

Israeli soldiers work at the scene where police said a Palestinian rammed his truck into a group of Israeli soldiers on a popular promenade in Jerusalem January 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Police identified the truck driver as a Palestinian from Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem and said he was shot dead. His uncle, Abu Ali, named him as Fadi Ahmad Hamdan Qunbor, 28, a father of four from the Jabel Mukabar neighborhood.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that nine Jabel Mukabar residents, including five members of the attacker’s family, were arrested on suspicion of aiding the attacker.

The Israeli military regularly takes soldiers on educational tours of Jerusalem, including the Armon Hanatziv vantage point.

Netanyahu visited the scene and convened his security cabinet, a forum of senior ministers, to discuss Israel’s response. He said that security forces were controlling access in and out of the neighborhood.

“We know the identity of the attacker. According to all the signs he is a supporter of Islamic State,” the prime minister said.

A government source said that ministers had called for the demolition of the attacker’s home and for his body not to be returned to the family for burial. It also decided to detain without trial persons expressing sympathy for Islamic State.

An Israeli soldier escorts another at the scene of a truck ramming incident in Jerusalem January 8, 2017 REUTERS/Ronen ZvulunRoni Alsheich, the national police chief, told reporters he could not rule out that the driver had been motivated by a truck ramming attack in a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people last month.

“It is difficult to get into the head of every individual to determine what prompted him, but there is no doubt that these things do have an effect,” Alsheich told reporters.

In another attack claimed by Islamic State and involving a truck driven into a crowd, nearly 90 people were killed in the French city of Nice in July.

STREET ATTACKS SLOWED

Actions inspired by Islamic State in Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem have been rare and only a few dozen Arab Israelis and Palestinians are known to have declared their sympathy with the group.

A wave of Palestinian street attacks, including vehicle rammings, has largely slowed but not stopped completely since it began in October 2015, with 37 Israelis and two visiting Americans having been killed in these assaults.

At least 231 Palestinians have been killed in violence in Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the same period. Israel says that at least 157 of them were assailants while others died during clashes and protests, blaming the violence on incitement by the Palestinian leadership.
An Israeli soldier escorts another at the scene of a truck ramming incident in Jerusalem

The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, denies that allegation, and says assailants have acted out of frustration over Israeli occupation of land sought by Palestinians in peace talks that have stalled since 2014.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, routinely praises those who carry out street attacks, and did so on Sunday.

“We bless this heroic operation resisting the Israeli occupation to force it to stop its crimes and violations against our people,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Reuters.

Security camera footage showed the truck racing towards the soldiers and then reversing into them.

A security guard identified only as “A” told Channel 10 how he shot at the truck and its driver.

“I shot at a tyre but realized there was no point as he has many wheels, so I ran in front of the cabin and at an angle, I shot at him and emptied my magazine,” he said.

“When I finished shooting, some of the officer cadets also took aim and also started firing.”

The footage showed many of the soldiers fleeing the scene as the attack took place, their rifles slung on their shoulders.

As a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, the truck driver would carry an Israeli identity card and be able to move freely through all of the city. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its united capital, a stance not supported by the international community.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Maayan Lubell, Ori Lewis, Mustafa Abu Ghaneyeh, and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza,; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and David Goodman)

Berlin truck attacker used at least 14 names: German police

Anis Amri suspect of Berlin Christmas market attack

By Joseph Nasr and Matthias Inverardi

BERLIN/DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) – The Tunisian man who killed 12 people last month by plowing a truck into a Berlin Christmas market had lived under at least 14 different names in Germany, a regional police chief said on Thursday, raising more questions about security lapses.

Anis Amri, shot dead by Italian police in Milan on Dec. 23, had been marked as a potential threat by authorities in the western federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW)in February 2016, some six months after he arrived in Germany and applied for asylum.

“He acted in a conspiratorial manner and used various personalities,” Dieter Schuermann, head of the NRW Criminal Police Unit, told the regional parliament during a briefing.

The 24-year-old divided his time between NRW and Berlin, where intelligence officials also classified him as a potential threat. But there was a consensus among security officials that he posed no concrete threat, Schuermann said.

An investigation into the attack is focusing on whether Amri had any accomplices.

Police arrested another Tunisian man in Berlin this week, who prosecutors say had dinner with Amri at an Arab restaurant in the capital one day before the attack on Dec. 19.

“INTENSIVE DISCUSSIONS”

A spokeswoman for the prosecution said on Wednesday that Amri and the arrested suspect, identified as 26-year-old Bilel A., had “very intensive discussions” at the restaurant on the eve of the attack.

The co-owner of the restaurant in north Berlin where the two allegedly met told Reuters on Thursday he had not been aware that Amri had dined at the premises until police came asking if they could have CCTV footage recorded on Dec. 18.

“No one who was here that night remembers seeing him,” said the co-owner, declining to give his name and requesting the eatery not be named.

“We are so busy we hardly have time to breathe. The police said he was here between 8 and 9 p.m.,” said the man, serving lunch as the restaurant began filling up.

At a shelter for migrants at the western end of Berlin where Bilel A. was arrested, refugees who said they knew Amri’s suspected accomplice said he had always told them he was Libyan.

“The strangest thing about him was that he used to pray every day but most evenings he would go out to nightclubs with his friends,” said Mohammad, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee who said he had shared a room at the shelter with Bilel A. six months ago before moving to another room at the facility.

(Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Turkey says Istanbul attacker’s identity established, manhunt goes on

Police special forces patrol outisde the Reina nightclub which was attacked by a gunman, in Istanbul, Turkey

By Nick Tattersall and Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey has established the identity of the gunman who killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day, its foreign minister said on Wednesday, as police rounded up more suspected accomplices.

In an interview with the state-run Anadolu news agency, Mevlut Cavusoglu gave no further details about the gunman, whom Turkish officials have not named.

The attacker shot his way into the exclusive Reina nightclub on Sunday then opened fire with an automatic rifle, reloading his weapon half a dozen times and shooting the wounded as they lay on the ground. Turks as well as visitors from several Arab nations, India and Canada were among the dead.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria.

Turkish media reports have said the attacker is believed to be an ethnic Uighur, possibly from Kyrgyzstan.

The shooting in Istanbul’s Ortakoy neighbourhood, an upscale district on the Bosphorus shore, came after a year in which NATO member Turkey was shaken by a series of attacks by radical Islamist and Kurdish militants and by a failed coup.

President Tayyip Erdogan said the attack, which targeted a club popular with local celebrities and moneyed foreigners, was being exploited to try to divide the largely Sunni Muslim nation and that the state never meddled in how people lived.

“There is no point trying to blame the Ortakoy attack on differences in lifestyles,” he said in a speech to local administrators at the presidential palace in Ankara.

“Nobody’s lifestyle is under systematic threat in Turkey. We will never allow this,” he said in comments broadcast live. It was his first public speech since the shooting.

Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate, which condemned the attack in its immediate aftermath, had issued a statement in December saying celebrating the New Year did not fit with Muslim values, triggering criticism from some parts of Turkish society.

Such calls have made many secular Turks suspicious of the Islamist background of Erdogan and the ruling AK Party, seeing them as bent on eroding the secular principles of the modern republic founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk after the fall of the Ottoman empire. Erdogan rejects such suggestions.

MORE DETENTIONS

The attacker appeared to have been well versed in guerrilla warfare and may have trained in Syria, a security source and a newspaper report said on Tuesday.

The Haberturk newspaper said police investigations revealed that the gunman had entered Turkey from Syria and went to the central city of Konya in November, travelling with his wife and two children so as not to attract attention.

On Wednesday, police in the western city of Izmir detained 27 people who had travelled from Konya, citing suspicion of links to the attack, the Dogan news agency said.

They included women and children. Video footage showed some of them being brought out of an apartment building to waiting vehicles.

Seven Uighur Turks were also detained at a restaurant in the working-class Istanbul neighbourhood of Zeytinburnu, where the gunman was thought to have gone by taxi after the attack and asked to borrow money to pay the driver, Haberturk said.

The newspaper said raids had been carried out on 50 addresses in the district, where many Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs and Uighurs live, and 14 people detained in total.

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun, Tulay Karadeniz and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Tom Heneghan)