Turkey manhunt ends as shooter takes own life after killing six

A massive manhunt for a gunman who killed six people in southern Turkey ended early Tuesday when he turned the gun on himself after being cornered by police, the IHA news agency reported.

The 37-year-old suspect had fled to a forested area after going on a rampage with a gun near Tarsus, which lies between the southern cities of Mersin and Adana, in which he shot dead six people and wounded another eight.

The Anadolu state news agency said the man had reportedly shot dead his ex-wife before heading out on a murderous spree.

The DHA and IHA news agencies said the suspect opened fire in a restaurant, killing its owner and an employee, before fleeing and shooting dead two other men -- one of them a shepherd watching his animals nearby, and the other a truck driver at a petrol station.

It was unclear who the sixth victim was.

The shooter fled with police launching a massive manhunt involving helicopters, which lasted into the early hours of Tuesday when they located him inside a house about 10 kilometres from where the shootings began.

The suspect turned the gun on himself to avoid being caught, IHA said.

Speaking to the agency from his hospital bed, Mehmet Han Topal, who works at the restaurant where the shootings began and who was wounded in the leg, described what happened.

"He came in without a word... We thought he was getting his telephone out, but he brought out a pistol," he said.

"I got down. He fired at me."

In a statement posted on X overnight, the Mersin governor's office said the incident began just before 2:00 pm (1100 GMT) and described the suspect as having had "multiple hospital admissions due to prohibited substance dependency and various psychiatric diagnoses".

The violence came a month after two shooting attacks by teenagers rocked Turkey, one of which injured 16 people, while the second claimed 10 lives, most of them young schoolchildren.

According to a Turkish NGO, there are tens of millions of firearms held by citizens, most of them without permits.

110 arrested on suspicion of IS ties

Turkish counter-terror police on Tuesday arrested 110 people on suspicion of activities in support of the Islamic State (IS) group in an operation largely targeting Istanbul, the Anadolu state news agency said.

The suspects are accused of organising classes in illegal associations, educating young children with IS ideology, collecting money for the group and seeking to recruit new IS members, in an operation coordinated by the Istanbul chief prosecutor's office.

The arrests came during simultaneous raids across three provinces, centred in Istanbul, with police seizing four rifles and 90 cartridges along with documents and digital materials.

Last week, police arrested another 324 people in raids targeting IS suspects across 47 provinces, the interior ministry said.

On April 7, a gunman was killed and two others were wounded in a shootout outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul.

Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said one of them was linked to an "organisation that exploits religion", which Turkish media reported was IS.

At the end of December, IS militants opened fire on police in the northwestern town of Yalova, killing three officers and wounding nine others.

Six IS militants were also killed in the hours-long gun battle that followed, with Turkey rounding up more than 600 suspected members of the group in the following weeks.