Bombing, gunfight in Istanbul suburb

Militants stage a gun and grenade attack on a police station in an Istanbul suburb, where security forces have arrived in an ongoing operation to kill or capture them.

According to Press TV, two unknown attackers, believed to be females, got off a vehicle and fired shots and hurled grenades at the police station in the Bayrampasa district of Turkey’s biggest city on Thursday.

Unconfirmed video has emerged purportedly showing two people shooting at a police bus as it was entering the police station.

No casualties have been reported so far, but police did return fire at the militants, injuring one of them. They have abandoned their car and escaped to a nearby building, where they are holed up. Police is evacuating nearby buildings in order to safely start a security operation against the assailants.

Violence has increased in Turkey, where the government has recently been engaged in an intensified crackdown on the country’s Kurdish population in the southeast. Turkey has also been carrying out airstrikes against Kurdish positions in Iraq, and Turkish artillery fire has also been hitting Kurds inside Syria.

SS