Turkish security forces targeted in series of attacks

Assailants have opened fire at the US consulate building and carried out a bomb attack on a police station in Istanbul, as two different attacks killed five security personnel in southeastern Turkey.

The US consulate of Turkey said no staff members were hurt in the attack in the Sariyer district, while at least 10 people, including seven police officers, were wounded in the blast at the police station in the Sultanbeyli district.

Both attacks occurred on Monday morning.

The far-leftist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army-Front (DHKP/C) claimed responsibility for the attack on the US consulate.

One of the assailants, a female who was wounded during the shoot-out with police, was later captured nearby.

Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Istanbul, said the woman was chased down a back street near the consulate, and had screamed: “I did it for my party,” before being shot and wounded by police.

The second attacker, also a woman, escaped from the area.

In 2013, the DHKP/C claimed responsibility for an attack on the US embassy in the capital, Ankara, that killed a Turkish security guard.

“The group is known for its anti-American and anti-US stance,” Lale Sariibrahimoglu, a military analyst, told Al Jazeera from Ankara.

In an earlier attack in Sultanbeyli on Monday, a van laden with explosives detonated outside a police station around 1am, with a fire following the blast collapsing part of the three-storey building.

An attacker was killed and at least 10 people, including civilians and police officers, were wounded.

Then, as forensic and bomb squad teams searched the scene, two attackers opened fire on them. A police officer and the two attackers were killed in that shootout.

In a separate incident, four police officers died in their vehicle when a roadside bomb exploded in the southeastern province of Sirnak.

A soldier was also killed when Kurdish fighters opened fire on a military helicopter in a separate attack in Sirnak, the military said in a statement. 

Air campaigns

Since last month, Turkey’s forces have been conducting air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) positions in Syria and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) targets in Iraq.

Ankara also agreed to let the US-led coalition use its bases for its fight against ISIL.

The move came after a suicide bombing blamed on ISIL, which killed 32 people, and an increase in PKK attacks in the country.