Two women killed in police operation after attack on police in Istanbul

Two female militants were killed by police when they fired shots and threw a grenade at a Turkish police bus in Istanbul on March 3, local media and the Istanbul governor said.

“Armenpress” reports citing Reuters that two police officers were lightly wounded in the attack, Governor Vasip Sahin told reporters in televised comments. An investigation was under way to identify the militant group responsible, he said.

One of the women threw a grenade and the other opened fire with what appeared to be a machine gun as the riot police bus drove towards the entrance of a police station in the Bayrampasa district of Turkey’s biggest city, footage from Dogan News Agency showed.

Police fired back, injuring one of the women, before tracking them to a nearby building, CNN Turk said.

Special forces units and police surrounded the building, television footage showed, leading to an hour-long stand-off between the women and the police in which there was sporadic gunfire.

Attacks on Turkey’s security forces have increased as violence flares in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, where a ceasefire between Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants and the state collapsed last July.