SHAFAQNA- An assailant fired a machine gun at a riot police point in Taksim Square in downtown İstanbul on Friday.
There was no casualty in the attack and the assailant, reportedly a woman, left her gun at the scene of the incident. A photograph posted on social media by a local journalist showed what appeared to be a crudely modified machine gun.
She managed to escape the scene on foot.
One police vehicle was hit with bullets, news reports said.
The attack comes just over three weeks after a suicide bomber blew herself up at a police station in İstanbul’s historic Sultanahmet district, killing one officer and wounding another.
The hard-left Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) initially claimed responsibility for the Sultanahmet attack but later retracted its statement. Some Turkish newspaper reports have suggested the attack was orchestrated by militants linked with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Taksim Square is a major transport hub, surrounded by hotels and lying at the end of one of the city’s largest shopping streets.
Source: todayszaman.com