The Guardian reports that the gunman is not amongst the eight people detained by anti-terrorism squads. Turkey’s interior ministry told reporters on Monday that there have been 147 detainments in just the last week over suspected ties to ISIS. Of those, 25 people were placed under formal arrest.
ISIS has reportedly released a statement taking responsibility for the lone gunman’s act, saying he “struck one of the most famous nightclubs where the Christians celebrate their apostate holiday.” The gunman is believed to be from either Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan. He may have escaped by abandoning his gun at the scene and slipping off in the ensuing chaos.
Police have supposedly seen some similarities between this attack and the suicide bomber who killed more than 40 people at Istanbul’s Atatürk airport in June. The Guardian says that aside from arrests, the response to ISIS and this recent attack has been swift:
The Turkish military said it had carried out raids against Isis in Syria in response to the attack. Turkish jets struck eight targets, and tanks and artillery fired on 103 targets near al-Bab, killing 22 fighters, the Turkish chief of general staff’s office told Anadolu.
ISIS claims to have multiple cells in Turkey, which it called in its statement a “protector of the cross.”
