Gunfight outside Israeli consulate in Istanbul leaves one attacker dead

By Mehmet Emin Caliskan, Bulent Usta and Murad Sezer

ISTANBUL, April 7 (Reuters) - One attacker was killed and two others were wounded in an extended gun battle with police outside the tower building housing the Israeli consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday, according to authorities and Reuters witnesses.

Police officers pulled out guns and took cover as shots rang out for at least 10 minutes near a permanent security checkpoint amid the glass towers in the heart of Turkey's main financial district. One person was seen covered in blood.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed an apparent attacker, in a dark top and carrying a backpack, moving among parked white police and security buses and firing, with an automatic rifle and a handgun. One body lay on the street.

No Israeli staff were at the consulate, which occupies a floor in the glassy tower, at the time of the attack, Turkish and Israeli authorities said.

U.S. ENVOY SAYS CONSULATE WAS TARGET

The three attackers had links to an organisation that “exploits religion”, Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said, without giving any name. Two of them were brothers and they had travelled in a rented car from the city of Izmit, he added.

While Turkish authorities did not say what motivated the attackers, Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, said on X that it was an attack on the Israeli consulate and he condemned it.

Israeli diplomats had left the consulate shortly after the Hamas-Israel war began in late 2023, a conflict that prompted broad pro-Palestinian protests outside the consulate and across the country, and a deep chill in Turkish-Israeli diplomatic ties.

Two police officers were lightly wounded in the attack, Istanbul Governor Davut Gul told reporters at the scene of the firefight, which occurred next to a major motorway just after midday.

DIPLOMATIC CHILL AMID GAZA WAR

Turkey, a fierce critic of Israel's military operations in Gaza, had recalled its ambassador from Israel in November 2023 and diplomatic relations have been effectively frozen since then.

At the same time that year, Israeli diplomats left Turkey due to security concerns including the protests. Since then, heavily armed police have remained in a broad area surrounding the consulate.

Militant violence has mostly subsided in Turkey in recent years after a violent spate in 2015-2016 when Islamic, Kurdish and leftist militants carried out attacks amid the spillover from the Syrian civil war.

The latest incident was late last year when three Turkish police officers and six Islamic State militants were killed in a gunfight in the town of Yalova in northwest Turkey, amid raids on militant cells believed to be planning Christmas and New Year attacks.