Assailants fire shots at US Consulate in Istanbul

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Two assailants opened fire at the United States (US) Consulate building in Istanbul on Monday, touching off a gunfight with police before fleeing the scene, Turkish media reports said.

The state-run Anadolu Agency said police later caught one person in connection with the attack.

On Monday, The Turkish government blamed a radical Marxist group for the gun attack on the US consulate in Istanbul.

“The attack on the consulate is linked with the DHKP-C,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity, referring to the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP-C) which also claimed a 2013 suicide attack at the US embassy in Ankara that killed a Turkish security guard and injured one other person.

The private Dogan news agency said one of the assailants, a woman, was injured in the crossfire and was captured inside a nearby building where she hid. No one else was injured in the onslaught.

Hours earlier an overnight bomb attack at a police station in Istanbul injured 10 people, including seven police officers, and caused a fire that collapsed part of the three-story building.

Police said the assailants exploded a car bomb near the station.

Unknown assailants later fired on police inspecting the scene of the explosion, sparking another gunfight with police that killed two of the assailants. The attacks come at a time of a sharp spike in violence between Turkey’s security forces and rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

Turkey is also taking a more active role against self-styled Islamic State (IS) militants.