Three more detained over US consulate attack in Istanbul
The detentions were made late Saturday in raids on houses in Istanbul's Kucukcekmece district, where the three gunmen killed in Wednesday's attack lived.
The assailants opened fire on a guardpost at the main public entrance of the heavily fortified consulate building in the upscale district of Istinye, killing three Turkish policemen before being shot dead.
Among the previously detained suspects is the driver of the car in which the assailants drove to the high-walled building, who had initially managed to escape.
The authorities have described the attack as a "suicide act" in which the gunmen did not intend to make it back alive.
There has been no official word on whether the attackers belonged to any outlawed group, but media reports said the police had clues linking them to Afghanistan, leading to suspicions the attack was inspired by the Al-Qaeda network.
Newspapers have described the three gunmen, aged 20, 23 and 26, as residents of an impoverished neighbourhood of the Kucukcekmece suburb, hailing from crowded migrant families from Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.
Their leader, Erkan Kargin, was an Islamist radical who travelled to Afghanistan, spent time in Al-Qaeda camps and indoctrinated the other two into religious extremism, according to the popular Vatan daily.
Some experts, however, have cast doubt on a possible Al-Qaeda link, describing the attack as the work of amateurs.
Other reports have speculated that a homegrown radical Islamist group was behind the assault.
Officials have only said that two of the gunmen had criminal records and one of them travelled abroad.
Security was beefed up across US missions in Turkey following the assault, for which no one has so far claimed responsibility.
The US consulate moved to its current high-security location in 2003 as foreign missions across the world stepped up security measures following the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York.
The most recent assault on a foreign mission in Turkey was in 2003 when Al-Qaeda militants detonated a car bomb at the British consulate in central Istanbul as part of two sets of twin suicide bombings five days apart that killed about 60 people, including the British consul.