Gunman caught, 'confesses'

A 34-year-old Uzbek man suspected of slaughtering 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub on New Year's Eve confessed to the massacre yesterday, hours after his capture in a police raid.

Authorities detained Abdulgadir Masharipov, who spent 17 days on the run after the attack claimed by Islamic State (IS) jihadists, along with three women and an Iraqi man during a massive police operation in Istanbul.

"The terrorist confessed his crime," Istanbul governor Vasip Sahin told reporters, saying the suspect's fingerprints matched those of the attacker and confirming he is an Uzbek national.

"He was trained in Afghanistan and can speak four languages. He's a well-trained terrorist," added the governor, saying Masharipov is believed to have first entered Turkey in January 2016.

Police also confiscated 197,000 US dollars (185,000 euros), two firearms and clips during the raid on an apartment, he added.

The arrest lessened the anxiety of Istanbul residents, already on edge after a string of attacks, who had feared for more than a fortnight that a trained killer was on the loose in the city.

The suspect had apparently slipped into the night following the attack on the glamorous Reina nightclub on the Bosphorus, while police tightened borders to prevent him escaping. But he was hiding in the working-class, densely populated western districts of Istanbul. Days of police tracking eventually traced him to an apartment in the residential Esenyurt district.

The IS extremist group took responsibility for the bloodbath, the first time it has ever openly claimed a major attack in Turkey.

Of the 39 killed in the Reina attack, 27 were foreigners including citizens from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq and Morocco who had been hoping to celebrate a special New Year.

The attack, just 75 minutes into 2017, rocked Turkey which had already been shaken by a series of attacks in 2016 blamed on jihadists and Kurdish militants that has left hundreds dead.