ISTANBUL, April 8 (Reuters) – Turkish authorities have detained 10 people in connection with Tuesday’s gun attack near the Israeli consulate in Istanbul as the investigation widened, Turkish media reported on Wednesday.
One attacker was killed and two others were wounded in the extended gun battle with police outside the tower building in Istanbul’s main financial district that houses the consulate.
Those detained include the two wounded assailants, who are being questioned in hospital as they undergo treatment, state-owned news agency Anadolu reported. The remaining eight suspects were arrested in operations in Istanbul and the nearby province of Kocaeli following the attack, it reported.
The interior ministry declined to comment on the detentions, while Istanbul police and the prosecutor’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.
Authorities have not detailed a motive for the assault, and the investigation is ongoing. U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack in a post on X called it an attack on the Israeli consulate and condemned it.
Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci has said the three attackers had links to a group that “exploits religion” without specifying further. Two of them were brothers, who had travelled in a rented car from the city of Izmit, he added.
The attacker killed at the scene was identified as Yunus Emre Sarban, according to an interior ministry source.
Sarban had previously been linked to financial networks with ties to the Islamic State militant group, leading to his assets being frozen in 2021, according to the government’s Official Gazette.
(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Daren Butler and Joe Bavier)
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