NAN-F-31
Attack
Istanbul, Jan. 5, 2017 (dpa/NAN) Turkey’s Vice President on Thursday refused to provide concrete details on the hunt for the main suspect in the Istanbul nightclub attack on New Year’s Eve.
Speaking to local broadcaster A Haber, Vice President Veysi Kaynak suggested that the suspect was “probably” from the Uighur ethnic group.
Kaynak refused, however, to reveal the suspect’s nationality, after Turkish authorities said on Wednesday that security forces had identified him.
The Turkic Uighurs form a sizeable Muslim minority in the restive Chinese border province of Xinjiang, and the treatment of Uighurs has been a point of tension between Beijing and Ankara in the past.
“Areas have been identified where he might have stayed.
Our security forces are searching parts of Silivri,” Kaynak went on to say, referring to a part of Istanbul province west of the city.
He did not rule out the possibility that the attacker may have fled abroad.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, in which 39 people died.
Many of them foreign nationals from the Middle East were killed while ringing in the New Year at Istanbul’s supermarket Reina nightclub. (dpa/NAN)
OYE/AMY
Edited by Celine-Damilola Oyewole/Abdullahi Yusuf