A car bomb exploded outside a court in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir, Turkey, on Thursday, sparking a gun battle in which at least two suspects were killed, state media and local officials said.

Ten people were injured in the blast, Izmir municipality secretary general Bugra Gokce told broadcaster CNN Turk.

A security source said police had shot dead two attackers following the blast, and the state-run Anadolu news agency said they were searching for a third. Hospital sources said ten people had been brought in wounded.

Turkey faces multiple security threats. It has been hit by a series of bombings over the past 18 months, some of them blamed on Islamic State (IS), others on Kurdish militants.

Turkish police detained several new suspects on Thursday in fresh raids over a nightclub attack that killed 39, as authorities tightened borders to prevent the fugitive killer from escaping.

A top official said the attacker was likely a Turkic Uighur and reports have indicated the authorities are looking into the possible existence of a cell, also including other jihadists from Central Asia.

But with the prospect of a dangerous trained killer on the run in the city adding to tensions in Istanbul after a spate of attacks, the authorities have still not caught the individual.

In the early hours of Sunday, a gunman stormed the swanky Reina nightclub on the Bosphorus in Istanbul and sprayed 120 bullets at terrified partygoers celebrating New Year.

Of the 39 dead, 27 were foreigners including citizens from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq and Morocco.

IS took responsibility for the massacre in a statement on Monday, marking the first time it has issued a clear and undisputed claim for a major attack inside Turkey.

The extremist group said it was a response to Ankara’s ambitious military operation against it in northern Syria, where Turkish armed forces are supporting opposition fighters retaking territory from IS.

Special forces detained several people suspected of links with the attack on the outskirts of Istanbul on Thursday, state-run news agency Anadolu said.

Authorities also tightened Turkish land borders, Dogan news agency reported, over fears the killer planned to flee the country.

The agency said checkpoints would be set up to search all vehicles and people leaving the country at border crossings in Edirne, western Turkey, which has a land border with Greece and Bulgaria.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday that the attacker had been identified but did not give a name or further details.

Deputy Prime Minister Veysi Kaynak told A Haber broadcaster on Thursday that the attacker was "probably" of Uighur origin as he sought to play down fears that the gunman would escape Turkey.

Most Uighurs, an eastern Turkic group, live in the Xinjiang region of China, although there are also significant populations in former Soviet Central Asian states.

Previous reports had said the killer could be from Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan. Kaynak said airports had also taken important measures to ensure the killer did not escape.

Responding to some reports in local media that there was a second gunman, Kaynak said security forces were "assessing all probabilities" but that the shots were fired from one gun.

Separately, two senior Turkish military officers were jailed for life on Thursday for involvement in July’s failed coup attempt that killed almost 250 people, marking the first conviction related to the putsch, news agencies said.

source:Reuters