01/01/2017 BBC Weekend News

A huge police operation is underway in Istanbul -

to find a gunman who shot dead 39 people at a nightclub.

The man opened fire at the Reina club at around 130

Dozens of injured remain in hospital.

15 foreigners - from Israel, Saudi Arabia

and Morocco were among - were among the dead.

Our Turkey Correspondent Selin Gerit has just sent this report.

One of the most famous nightclubs in Istanbul,

Reina is packed with a jubilant crowd, ready to welcome

They are counting down to what they hope will

A man armed with a long barrelled weapon opens fire outside the venue.

He kills a policeman and another civilian as he rushes his way in.

The club immediately turns into the scene of a massacre.

As the attacker fires on the people partying inside.

Survivors still in shock of what they have been through.

My husband suddenly told me to get on the floor, a man ran inside,

two or three people started firing and then there was a fog.

I fainted at that moment until special forces

There were bodies lying on the floor.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack

and authorities did not name any suspects.

This man was a security guard at the club last night.

He said he heard gunfire and ran away.

Everyone is nervous at the moment, he said, the attacker

The security forces say the assailant was alone rather

He was wearing a jacket and trousers when he opened fire,

but there is separate information that he tried to leave wearing

The nightclub area remains sealed off this morning,

heavily armed police block the street leading to Reina club.

Crime scene investigators were inside searching for evidence.

This is as close as we can get to the scene of the attack that

In a span of 18 months more than 500 people have been killed in this

Now, civilians got hit on a night of hope and joy.

This already feels like it is going to be yet another difficult

Turkey faces the Islamic State threat, a renewed conflict

with the Kurdish rebels and the south-east and

across the border in Syria and Iraq, and big cities like Istanbul feel

Our Correspondent Selin Gerit is outside a hospital in Istanbul

where some of the victims are being treated.

On the security operation and the manhunt. The attacker is still at

large and the hunt for him carries on. In several districts in

Istanbul. After reports of suspicious people came through. I'm

at one of the hospitals and there are almost 70 people injured, four

are in critical condition and the death toll is still at 39 but the

fear is that it could rise. The Prime Minister has spoken and has

said no nation is immune to such terror attacks, but Istanbul, having

witnessed an attack only three weeks ago, feels increasingly edgy. Thanks

for joining us. The Queen was absent from the annual

New Year's Day church service in Sandringham this morning,

because of a "lingering heavy cold". She also missed the Christmas Day

service at her Norfolk estate Buckingham Palace says the Queen has

been up and about in recent days, but is "still recuperating"

as our Royal Correspondent, For a second time in the holiday

season at the Royals headed to church, and for a second time the

Queen was a notable absentee. Her 95 erode husband did attend, he was to

scrub by one observer as chipper. -- 95-year-old husband. The Windsors

are an attraction for the dedicated, and despite the weather they gather

outside the Sandringham church, but once again the monarch was not on

display. Disappointed that the Queen was not there but that is

understandable at 90 years of age. She is in the best place and I wish

her all the best for 2017. She is not well and we do not want to see

her out in this weather. At Christmas our attention is drawn to

the birth of a baby some 2000 years ago. The Queen recorded her

Christmas message early in December and will not have taken the decision

to miss church likely, the supreme Governor of the Church of England

has a deep faith, but on the advice of her doctor that she is exercising

caution in the face of a heavy cold she has had for nearly two weeks.

The Queen has been laid low and left feeling pretty miserable at the end

of another significant year in her long reign. As well as celebrating

her landmark birth date she has started to acknowledge her advancing

age and reduce her workload. Just last month she severed hurling stick

25 organisations she had been patron of for many decades -- she severed

her links with 25 organisations. As head of state she continues to deal

with the government documents she receives and she is clearly doing

all she can to get rid of a lingering cold rather than make it

worse. Peter Hunt, BBC News, Buckingham Palace.

A police hunt's underway for a hit-and-run driver who knocked

down two teenage girls in Oldham, leaving one dead and the other

12 year old Helina Kotlarova was killed when crossing with her

The two girls had been holding hands at the time.

One of her relatives described what happened.

When we went there, she was on the floor and she had

I was touching her, seeing if she was going to breathe

or something, but she couldn't breathe or nothing.

There's been delays in attending to emergency ambulance calls

across London after its computer system crashed on one

Staff in the London Ambulance control room had to log calls

using pen and paper for nearly five hours overnight.

Jon Ironmonger is at the London Ambulance Service headquarters.

A troubled start to the New Year for staff here with a direct impact on

the safety of Londoners, and for about five hours from 1230 in the

morning the computer system used by London Ambulance Service crashed and

that was because of a technical error and it forced the control room

staff to process and log the emergency calls coming in by hand,

with pen and paper. This delayed emergency response times and

treatment, and had an impact on another service, a real-time web

mapping tool which tells the control room staff where the ambulances are.

That also went down, and they had to communicate via radio communication

only. And this on one of the busiest nights of the year, tens of

thousands of partygoers were on the streets in London at the time, they

were alcohol fuelled and London and live service said it responded to

hundreds of calls. -- London Ambulance Service. They said staff

are trained to cope with these situations and prioritised the

response to patients with life-threatening conditions. An

investigation into the cause of the problem will now be carried out.

Thanks for joining us. The Archbishop of Canterbury,

Justin Welby, has urged people to use 2017 to heal divisions caused

by the EU referendum. In his new year message

recorded in Coventry, the leader of the Church of England

praised the efforts of refugees Our religious affairs correspondent

Martin Bashir has more. Surrendering to the demands

of television lighting, the Archbishop of Canterbury

prepares to deliver his New Year's Justin Welby returned to Coventry,

the city where he started A city whose wartime suffering

and forgiveness, he says, The story of this city says

so much that is true about Britain at its best,

about our courage, standing up to tyranny, how we stand alongside

the suffering and defeated, how we stand for human

dignity and hope. The Archbishop visited a drop-in

centre for refugees, people he called a blessing

to our way of life. And he drew his message to a close

by focusing on an issue that has divided so many parts

of the country. The EU referendum was a tough

campaign, and it has left division. But I know that if we look

at our roots, our history and our culture in the Christian

tradition, if we reach back into what is best in this country,

we will find a path towards reconciling the differences

that have divided us. From Coventry to Canterbury,

the Archbishop believes that looking back will only help us prepare

for the future. A very happy New Year. We have a

contrast across the UK to