ISTANBUL -- Turkish police searched Sunday for a gunman who attacked New Year's Eve revelers at a popular Istanbul nightclub, killing at least 39 people, including at least 24 foreigners.
At least 69 others were wounded, with four in critical condition Sunday.
The attacker, armed with a long-barreled weapon, killed a policeman and a civilian outside the Reina club about 1:15 a.m. Istanbul time before entering and firing at people partying inside, Istanbul Gov. Vasip Sahin said.
An estimated 600 people were celebrating inside the club, which is often frequented by famous locals, including singers, actors and sports stars.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for what authorities immediately called a terrorist attack. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu did not speculate on the identity or motives of the gunman, only saying that "God willing, he will be caught in a short period of time."
But a senior U.S. official said Sunday the emerging assessment of both U.S. and Turkish authorities was that the Islamic State extremist group was either directly responsible for the attack or had inspired the gunman.
Private NTV news channel said that when the assailant entered the upscale nightclub on the shore of the Bosporus, on the European side of the city, he was wearing a Santa Claus outfit -- a claim Prime Minister Binali Yildirim denied.
"There is no truth to this," Yildirim said. "He is an armed terrorist as we know it."
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Security camera footage obtained by The Associated Press from the Haberturk newspaper shows what appears to be a man dressed in black and carrying a backpack as he shoots down a police officer outside the nightclub. Footage taken by a different camera inside Reina shows a figure wearing different clothes and what could be a Santa Claus hat.
Initial reports from the scene described as many as three gunmen, all dressed as Santa Claus, but Turkish officials said those reports were incorrect.
Yildirim said the attacker left a gun at the club and escaped by "taking advantage of the chaos" that ensued. Some customers reportedly jumped into the waters of the Bosporus to escape the attack.
On Sunday, heavily armed police blocked the snowy street in front of the nightclub. The entrance was covered with blue plastic sheeting below a Turkish flag. Police also patrolled the Asian side of the Bosporus on the other side of the club.
The U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul on Sunday warned American citizens to keep their movements in the city "to an absolute minimum." A statement reminded U.S. citizens that extremists "are continuing aggressive efforts to conduct attacks in areas where U.S. citizens and expatriates reside or frequent."
The owner of the Reina club, Mehmet Kocarslan, said Turkey had been on alert after U.S. intelligence officials last month warned about a potential attack over the holidays.
"Extraordinary security measures had been taken in the past two weeks along the Bosporus coastal line with policemen on vigil for 24 hours at tents set up along the road," Kocarslan said in a statement cited by NTV television.
The United States denied reports in Turkish news outlets that its security agencies knew in advance that the nightclub was at risk of a terror attack. The U.S. Embassy in Ankara said in a statement that "contrary to rumors circulating in social media, the U.S. Government had no information about threats to specific entertainment venues, including the Reina club."
American injured
Among the dead were an 18-year-old Israeli woman, three Indians, three Lebanese, a woman with dual French-Tunisian citizenship and her Tunisian husband, three Jordanians, a Belgian national and a Kuwaiti citizen, according to those countries' foreign ministries and a diplomat.
A U.S. State Department official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said one American man was among those wounded. Turkey's minister for family and social policies, Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya, said citizens of Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon and Libya were among those injured.
Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said the bodies of foreign nationals killed in the attack would be delivered to their families today.
"Please answer my comment, and tell me you have not died," one Facebook user, Sheery Rudan, posted on the profile photo of 22-year-old Mustafa Jalal, an Iraqi student from Kirkuk. The school where he studied, Kemburgaz University, announced his death on Twitter.
Hassan Alaa, who was close to Jalal, struggled with the news of his boyhood friend's death. Jalal, who was an only child, was active, outgoing, and loved cars and swimming, he said.
"I can't believe this. We would have breakfast together every day," Alaa said, when reached in the Iraqi city of Erbil. "And now he's gone. Before he left for the club, he wished me a happy birthday and we were joking around."
One patron, professional soccer player Sefa Boydas, described on Twitter the chaos at the club. In a series of posts that were later deleted, Boydas said he did not see who was shooting, but he noted that police arrived on the scene quickly. He carried his girlfriend, who was wearing high heels, he said, out of the club to safety.
"At first we thought some men were fighting with each other," a Lebanese woman who gave her name as Hadeel told the Reuters news agency. She was in the club with her husband and a friend.
"We heard the guy screaming Allahu akbar," she said, which is Arabic for "God is great."
"We heard his footsteps crushing the broken glass," she said. "We got out through the kitchen, there was blood everywhere and bodies."
Others did not survive the assault.
Mustafa Sezgin Seymen, 32, was at Reina Saturday night with his fiancee, Sezen Arseven. She was wounded; Seymen, a native of the Black Sea city of Trabzon, was killed.
"I'm returning without you from the place we went together," Arseven wrote of Seymen in a public Facebook post on Sunday. "I have lost my spouse, my life partner, my most beloved."
Officials on Sunday called the nightclub attack a "massacre" and an act of terrorism. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the attack was meant to "trigger chaos" and offered condolences for those who lost their lives, including the "foreign guests."
We "will never give passage to these dirty games," Erdogan said in a statement posted on the presidential website.
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram to Erdogan, saying that "it is hard to imagine a more cynical crime than killing innocent people during New Year celebrations."
"However, terrorists don't share moral values. Our common duty is to combat terrorists' aggression," Putin said.
The White House condemned what it called a "horrific terrorist attack" and offered U.S. help to Turkey. The U.N. Security Council condemned the "heinous and barbaric" assault in the "strongest terms."
Yildirim, the prime minister, vowed to keep fighting terrorism, adding that "the terror that happens here today may happen in another country in the world tomorrow."
Separately, police in Ankara, the Turkish capital, detained eight people Saturday who it said were members of the Islamic State, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency. The news organization said the militants were preparing an attack ahead of New Year's Eve.
Information for this article was contributed by Zeynep Bilginsoy, Suzan Fraser, Mehmet Guzel, Dusan Stojanovic, Dominique Soguel, Jon Gambrell, Philippe Sotto and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press; by Tim Arango, Rukmini Callimachi, Sewell Chan, Isabel Kershner, Christopher Mele, Elisabetta Povoledo, Eric Schmitt and staff members of The New York Times; by Erin Cunningham, Kareem Fahim and Heba Habib of The Washington Post; and by Ercan Ersoy and Selcan Hacaoglu of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 01/02/2017