Turkish news reports say a suspect has been arrested in the attack on an Istanbul nightclub that killed 39 people on December 31.
The Hurriyet Daily News said Abdulkadir Masharipov was detained Monday in Istanbul’s Esnyurt district. The report said his son was nearby.
It also reported the suspect was undergoing medical tests.
The huge manhunt for Masharipov has been under way for days, with Turkish media reports last week identifying the Uzbek national as a key suspect. More than 40 other foreign nationals have been swept up in the dragnet as police searched for suspects to the attack.
Hurriyet, citing police sources, reported last week that Masharipov arrived in Istanbul on December 15 from the central province of Konya to prepare for the attack.
FILE – Relatives of Fatih Cakmak, a security guard and a victim of an attack by a gunman at Reina nightclub, react during his funeral in Istanbul, Turkey, Jan. 2, 2017.
The New Year’s Eve attack was the third on Turkey in the past year linked to Central Asians with admitted links to Islamic State extremists.
IS jihadists from Central Asia were identified in two earlier attacks, including an assault on Istanbul’s Ataturk airport in June that killed 44 people and wounded more than 230 others. The Turkish government said the three suicide bombers behind the attack were from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
A suicide bomber from Russia’s largely Muslim Caucasus republic of Dagestan was identified after she blew herself up outside an Istanbul police station in January 2015. Eighteen police were killed in that blast.
Intelligence agencies have long described Turkey as a crossing point for hundreds of Central Asian radicals moving into Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State in its push to set up a caliphate in Syria and large parts of northern Iraq.
Analysts from the New York-based security and intelligence firm Soufan Group said at least 4,700 IS fighters in Iraq and Syria were identified as coming from Central Asian republics, in an analysis released in December 2015.
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