Monday, August 10, 2015

At Least 9 Dead in Marxist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front Attack on U.S. Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey (VIDEO)

At the New York Times, "Gun Battle Erupts Outside U.S. Consulate in Istanbul":
The assault was one of four major incidents of violence across Turkey on Monday, none of them attributed to the Islamic State. They were instead blamed on the Marxist and anti-American Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, which claimed the consulate attack, and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or P.K.K. That group has fought an insurgency in Turkey for more than three decades and Turkey’s government views it as a primary threat...
And the Wall Street Journal, "Nine Killed in Attacks Across Turkey":

ISTANBUL—Nine people were killed in separate attacks across Turkey on Monday, adding to worries here that Ankara’s decision to step up military pressure on Kurdish separatists and increase involvement in the U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State will trigger more violence on Turkish soil.

A car carrying explosives struck a police station in Istanbul’s Sultanbeyli neighborhood at 1 a.m. local time, killing the attacker and wounding three policemen and seven bystanders.

Less than six hours later, two gunmen opened fire on the same police station, setting off a gunfight in which two attackers and one police officer were killed.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks, and the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors militant messages, reported no statements by Islamic State about the police station assaults.

Still, they compounded the jitters of Istanbul’s 14 million people on a day when the U.S. Consulate in the Sariyer district also was hit by gunfire.

There were no casualties, and one of the two women who carried out the 7 a.m. attack was captured. Authorities identified her as Hatice Asik, 42, of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.

The DHKP-C, which is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and the U.S., killed a Turkish security guard and wounded several other people in a suicide attack on the U.S. Embassy in Ankara two years ago.

The flare-up of violence in Turkey’s largest city occurred a day after the U.S. deployed six F-16 fighter jets and 300 military personnel to Incirlik air base in southern Turkey as part of joint Turkey-U.S. bid to increase military pressure on Islamic State forces in neighboring Iraq and Syria.

Concerns that the interim government of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was plunging Turkey deeper into the region’s conflicts were multiplied by attacks elsewhere in Turkey.

A roadside bombing in southeastern Sirnak province on Monday killed four policemen and wounded another, according to local media reports. Also, one soldier was killed when a military helicopter drew fire in the province in an attack officials blamed on “separatist terrorists”—shorthand for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK...
Still more.

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