Attackers target court

ONE person has been killed and two assailants were shot dead in an attack on a courthouse in Istanbul, Turkish officials said.

The alleged attackers, a man and woman, were killed during an ‘attempt to attack’ a security checkpoint at the Caglayan courthouse on Tuesday morning, interior minister Ali Yerlikaya posted on social media.

He said six people were wounded, including three police officers. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan later said one of the civilians had died.

Caglayan, also known as the Istanbul Justice Palace, is a huge court complex in the Kagithane district on the city’s European side.

Heavily guarded and with multiple entrances, it was Europe’s largest courthouse when it opened in 2011.

Camera footage published by Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency showed the assailants being shot on the building’s forecourt. They appeared to shoot back at police before being killed.

Other images showed people sheltering by the gates of a metal detector inside the courthouse or running for cover. Police officers helped a man who appeared to have been wounded in the leg.

Mr Yerlikaya later identified the attackers as alleged members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, a farleft group considered a terrorist organisation in Turkey, the US and the European Union.

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation, justice minister Yilmaz Tunc said.

The attack took place as Turkey commemorated the anniversary of an earthquake in the country’s south that killed more than 53,000 people.

“The Republic of Turkey will continue to fight against all terrorist organisations and those who support them,” Mr Erdogan said at a commemoration ceremony in the southern city of Kahramanmaras.

“I would like to pray for the soul of the injured person who lost their life.”

The DHKP/C has been largely inactive in recent years. In March 2015, the group took a prosecutor hostage at the same courthouse, demanding details about the police killing of a teenager during anti-government protests the previous year.

Two gunmen died as police stormed the building, and the prosecutor later died of his injuries.

The group also claimed a February 2013 suicide bombing on the US Embassy in Ankara in which a Turkish security guard was killed and four other people wounded.

Last month, a man was shot and killed at an Istanbul church in an attack claimed by the so-called Islamic State group.

Two men were later arrested on suspicion of killing Tuncer Cihan, 52, on January 28 at Santa Maria Church in the Buyukdere neighbourhood.

Dozens of suspected IS members and supporters were also detained.