Islamic State claims Istanbul New Year shooting

The Islamic State (IS) on Monday claimed responsibility for the New Year mass shooting by a lone gunman at a Bosphorus nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – The Islamic State (IS) on Monday claimed responsibility for the New Year mass shooting by a lone gunman at a Bosphorus nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey.

In a statement on one of its online channels, IS said a militant used a machine gun and hand grenades in the attack at Reina nightclub, claiming to have killed and wounded over 150 people.

According to Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, the gunman who was mistakenly reported to have worn a Santa Claus costume during the violence was still at large as a manhunt by police continued in Istanbul and elsewhere.

The group justified the mass killing by calling the New Year celebration an “idolatry practice of Christians.”

They also accused the secular, Muslim-majority Turkish government of being “apostate, an ally, and servant of the Crusaders” for its role in fighting the group as part of the US-led Coalition.

The IS statement also mentioned an early November 2016 speech by the group’s leader-in-hiding Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi where he declared Jihad (holy war) against Turkey.

The declaration was regarding Turkey’s August launch of an ongoing land incursion into a portion of northern Syria where the group holds sway.

Turkey began the incursion dubbed Operation Euphrates Shield shortly after a suicide bomber killed 57 and wounded 66 others at a Kurdish wedding in the border city of Gaziantep.

Another call for targeting Turkey came in late December when IS released a gruesome video purporting to show the burning alive to death of two captive Turkish soldiers, one of them a Kurd.

In the video, a Turkish-speaking militant urged fellow jihadis in Turkey to “burn the country.”

This is the second time IS claimed an attack in Turkey, the first being an October 2016 bombing also claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK) in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir.

Other attacks blamed on IS by Turkish officials, such as the one at the Gaziantep wedding and the July 2015 suicide bombing that killed 33 activists in the Kurdish town of Suruc on the border with Syria have gone unclaimed.

Additionally, those responsible for the October 2015 twin bombing at a pro-Kurdish peace rally in Ankara that left 103 dead and the June 2016 Ataturk Airport attack that killed 45 are still unknown.

The Ankara bombings remain the terror attack with the highest number of casualties in Turkey’s modern history.

 

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany