Kuwait monitors wounded – Selfie shows alleged Istanbul attacker

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KUWAIT CITY, Jan 3, (Agencies): Kuwaitis who were injured in the terrorist attack on a nightclub in Reina, Istanbul, Sunday, are receiving treatment at a Turkish hospital, reports Al-Rai daily.

The daily added Kuwait’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Kuwaiti Embassy in Turkey and the Kuwaiti Consulate in Istanbul are following up on the health condition of the victims around the clock. One woman is said to have undergone a surgery to extract the bullet from her stomach. Her condition is believed to be stable.

According to Al-Anba daily, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Khaled Al-Jarallah has reassured the families of those injured in the attack that the Kuwaiti Consulate in Istanbul is constantly monitoring the condition of all injured Kuwaitis. Al-Jarallah pointed out two of the injured have left the hospital and another one or two are expected to leave soon. Al- Jarallah added the rest of those who continue to be hospitalized will leave upon recommendation of the doctors.

Meanwhile, a Kuwaiti woman whose daughter was one of the victims of the attack said she received a call from her and she said ‘someone’ was shooting at her and that she feared being killed. The mother said the 26-yearold daughter sent her a voice message at 02:00 am and told her that she and her friends had taken shelter under a table to escape from the bullets. She also said shrapnel had caused injury to her leg.

The mother added she tried to call her daughter for several times but to no avail. She then called the Operations Room of the Ministry of Interior and asked for the phone number of the Kuwaiti Embassy in Ankara. She added someone from the embassy called her but she could not give him the phone number of the daughter. The mother added she received a call from her daughter again at 05:00. She said, she and her friends were interrogated for several hours. She also said she will leave Turkey for Kuwait on the first available flight.

In a video clip that has been circulating on social media, one of the survivors of the recent shooting incident in Istanbul, a Kuwaiti citizen, narrates how she heard sporadic gunshots which were preceded by shouts of “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is Great). When she saw pools of blood and several bodies on the floor, she thought that she will not survive and had to crawl on glass shards to hide. At some point, she heard voices saying they should lie on the floor. As the gunshots drew closer, she revealed that she said her last prayers and asked for redemption from Allah.

Even when the rescue police team arrived at the scene and one of officers tried to reach out to her to pull her out from her hiding place, she did not believe that she was being rescued because all she saw around her were dead bodies and blood. At that moment, the one thing she wished was to go back to her country. The survivor expressed her surprise that such a popular place did not have enough security despite the huge sums of money the revelers, mostly Arabs, spent in that club.

The gunman who killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day in an attack claimed by Islamic State appears to have been well versed in guerrilla warfare and may have trained in Syria, a newspaper report and a security source said on Tuesday. The attacker, who remains at large, shot dead a police officer and a civilian at the entrance to the exclusive Reina nightclub on Sunday. He then opened fire with an automatic rifle inside, reloading his weapon half a dozen times and shooting the wounded as they lay on the ground.

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