Assailants killed after attacking Istanbul police
Far-left group claims gun and bomb attack by two women on a police station that slightly wounded two officers.
Police in Istanbul have shot and killed two women who had earlier attacked police with gunfire and a hand grenade, Turkish officials and state media said.
Security footage broadcast on national television channels on Thursday showed them brandishing weapons they pulled out of their handbags. Officers returned fire, injuring one of the attackers before they fled the scene.
The women escaped the scene in a vehicle and hid inside a building located near the police station in Istanbul’s Bayrampasa district. Police then surrounded the building and launched an operation to apprehend them.
The two women were “neutralised”, Istanbul governor Vasip Sahin was quoted as saying by the official Anatolia news agency. Two police officers were slightly wounded.
A banned far-left group, the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army-Front, or DHKP-C, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a statement on a website close to the group.
“Greetings to you, our two brave female liberation fighters who have taken the people’s liberation fight on their shoulders,” the statement said.
Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal, reporting from southern Turkey, said it was the latest in a series of attacks that have been rocking Istanbul and Ankara in recent months.
Turkey has been on a state of alert for months since a series of deadly attacks on its soil.
Last month, 29 people were killed in a car bombing that targeted a military convoy in Ankara, which was claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a breakaway faction of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
In 2015, there were four deadly bomb attacks blamed on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, including the deadliest in Turkey’s modern history that killed 103 people in Ankara in October.