ISTANBUL — Turkish police shot two female militants dead following an attack on a police bus on Thursday, March 3. A radical leftist group has claimed responsibility.
Caught on surveillance camera, one woman threw a grenade while the other opened fire with what appeared to be a machine gun as a riot police bus headed for the entrance of a police station in the Bayrampasa district of Turkey's biggest city, Istanbul. The hand grenade did not explode.
Police returned fire, injuring one of the militants, before the pair fled the scene in a vehicle. Police tracked down the women and found them in a nearby building. The area was evacuated as special forces quickly surrounded the building. The pair reportedly ignored calls for them to surrender and opened fire on officers.
The hour-long standoff was caught on camera by local television stations.
Both assailants were killed in the operation, two police officers were wounded — one by broken glass during the attack on the bus and the other during the assault on the building.
Following the incident, a website close to the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) — a group that has repeatedly targeted police stations, largely in Istanbul suburbs — claimed responsibility.
The DHKP-C have waged a violent campaign for more than three decades aimed at replacing the Turkish government with a Marxist one. Among other attacks, the group carried out a 2013 suicide bombing on the U.S. Embassy that killed a security guard and also opened fire on the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul last year.
Both Kurdish rebels and far-left militants have attacked police in Istanbul in the past.
Thursday's attack came amid a surge in violence in Turkey since mid-2015.
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