Three dead following police siege in Istanbul

ISTANBUL – Turkish police killed a leader of a left-wing armed group yesterday after laying siege to its hideout in central Istanbul…

ISTANBUL – Turkish police killed a leader of a left-wing armed group yesterday after laying siege to its hideout in central Istanbul.

One police officer and a passerby also died in the shooting. Six policemen and a television cameraman were wounded.

Turkish interior minister Besir Atalay said the four-hour raid on an apartment in a housing block on the Asian side of Istanbul was part of a wider operation in which 40 people were detained in Turkey’s largest city.

Mr Atalay said the dead militant, identified as Orhan Yilmazkaya, was a senior member of the Revolutionary Headquarters group, a little-known organisation he said had links to Kurdish separatist rebels.

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Revolutionary Headquarters is suspected of being behind attacks on a military barracks and on a building that housed the offices of the ruling AK Party, he said.

Istanbul governor Muammer Guler said the police raid was one of more than 60 carried out in Istanbul overnight against Islamist and leftist militants suspected of planning “sensational attacks”.

Heavily armed special forces surrounded the apartment block in the early morning. At the height of the siege, thick smoke billowed from a window of the block. Residents were trapped inside their homes as police and militants exchanged fire.

Police said the militants killed one civilian and wounded a cameraman during the shooting.

Explosives were found inside the apartment, which is in the district of Bostanci.

The raids were mounted days before May Day, when police are usually on alert for clashes with leftist militants.

Last week, Turkey declared May Day a public holiday.

Islamist radicals have carried out bomb attacks in predominantly Muslim Turkey in the past, most notably in 2003 when al-Qaeda militants killed more than 60 people in a series of bombings in Istanbul.

“These are extreme leftist, separatist and radical groups. There are more than 10 detained in the operations. Terrorists responded by throwing bombs in some places and seven policemen were wounded,” Mr Guler said.

Turkey has also cracked down on members of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

– (Reuters)