Family members and friends carry a coffin containing the remains of Ayhan Akin, one of the nightclub shooting victims in Sunday’s attack in Istanbul, Turkey.
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Family members and friends carry a coffin containing the remains of Ayhan Akin, one of the nightclub shooting victims in Sunday’s attack in Istanbul, Turkey.
AP
NPR’s Peter Kenyon reports from Istanbul that the state-funded English-language TRT World news channel is showing images of a passport belonging to the suspect in Sunday’s attack on an Istanbul nightclub.
The passport holder is 28-year-old Lakhe Mashrapov of the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan.
The passport photo appears to be of the same man who appears in a “selfie” video released yesterday by Turkish authorities. The video shows the man walking along a city street. Turkish authorities did not say when the video was recorded or how they obtained it.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack on Istanbul’s Reina nightclub, which killed at least 39 people. A lone gunman shot his way into the nightclub in the early hours of New Year’s Day when holiday revelers packed the club.
Mashrapov remains at large.
Peter further reports:
The claim of responsibility by ISIS prompted Turkey’s deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus to say Turkey’s response will be to step is military attacks against ISIS in northern Syria.
That escalation appears to have already begun. The military tells the state-run Anatolia News Agency that Turkish attacks have killed at least 18 ISIS fighters in the past 24 hours and at least 150 ISIS targets have been hit by air strikes or tank and artillery fire in recent days.
Police raids continue in Istanbul neighborhoods, Peter reports, and eight people are being held for questioning in connection with the attack.
Article source: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/03/507985848/turkey-identifies-suspect-in-nightclub-attack?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news