The Turkish police said Thursday they had detained four people in connection with an investigation into a shooting at the United States consulate in Istanbul a day earlier that left six people dead and two injured.Three gunmen and three police officers were killed in the gunfire that erupted at the consulate early Wednesday, while a fourth assailant escaped in a car. Two of the injured were police officers who remain hospitalized. The attack was the first on an embassy or consulate in Turkey in five years. "Right now, there are four people under custody," Besir Atalay, the Turkish interior minister, said in front of the Istanbul Security Forces Headquarters on Thursday. "Three of them are in Istanbul, and the fourth one was brought from outside Istanbul."
It was unclear what role the detainees may have played in the attack, and whether one of them was the driver who had fled the scene.
| I'm just guessing that a liberal application of Turkish truncheons will loosen their tongues .. or their teeth ... |
The minister said the number of detainees could increase as the investigation expanded, but refused to elaborate on any possible organizational links behind the shooting, which Turkish and American officials have called a terrorist attack.
Several Turkish news outlets have speculated that Al Qaeda was involved in the attack, with claims that at least one of the gunmen received arms training in Afghanistan.
NTV, a private news television, said that Erkan Kargin, 26, one of the gunmen who was killed at the consulate, had been sentenced for his membership to IBDA-C, an illegal fundamentalist group here. The two other assailants, Bulent Cinar, 23, and Raif Topcil, lived on the same street in Istanbul, and the police confiscated a number of publications and documents with unidentified religious content at their apartments, the same report said.
The suspect brought from outside Istanbul was flown from Kars, an eastern town in Turkey. NTV reported that the police had tracked mobile phone conversations between some of the assailants and that suspect before the attack.
| "Mustafa, the number seven! I need to loosen up!" |