Assailants fire shots at US Consulate in Istanbul

ISTANBUL — Two assailants open fire at the heavily protected US Consulate building in Istanbul on Monday, touching off a gunfight with police before fleeing the scene, Turkish media reports say.

One of the assailants, a woman, is later captured at a nearby building and hospitalized. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency, quoting unnamed police sources, says she has been identified as a member of a banned leftist group. No one else was injured in the onslaught.

Anadolu names the captured assailant as 42-year-old Hatice Asik and says she is a member of the far-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Army-Front, or DHKP-C. The group claimed responsibility for a 2013 suicide attack on the US Embassy in Ankara, which killed a Turkish security guard.

Turkish police officers run for cover during a gunfight near the site of an overnight explosion at a police station in Istanbul's Sultanbeyli neighborhood, August 10, 2015. (AP/Akin Celiktas)
Turkish police officers run for cover during a gunfight near the site of an overnight explosion at a police station in Istanbul’s Sultanbeyli neighborhood, August 10, 2015. (AP/Akin Celiktas)

Hours earlier an overnight bomb attack at a police station in Istanbul injures three policemen and seven civilians and causes a fire that collapses part of the three-story building. Police say the assailants exploded a car bomb near the station. Unknown assailants later fire on police inspecting the scene of the explosion, sparking another gunfight with police that kills a member of the police inspection team and two assailants.

— AP

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