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Armed clash not act of terror in Istanbul: Police

20 May 2010 23:47 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Police authorities said on Thursday that the armed clash in which a police officer was killed and another one was injured was not an act of terror, APA reports citing news.xinhuanet.com website.
The statement was made by Tufan Erguder, deputy police chief of Turkey’s megacity Istanbul after visiting the scene of the clash in a graveyard in northern district of Sariyer in European side.
The semi-official Anatolia news agency quoted him as saying " the injured police officer has been hospitalized. He is not in critical condition. The assailant is also in hospital and he is in life-threatening condition."
One of them, Turgay Yilmaz, lost his life. The second police officer, Mehmet Birlik, has been hospitalized.
He said that the assailant was identified as Baris Dogan who was working as a janitor.
"It was revealed that the gunman first attacked the officer with a knife. Then he shot him twice," he added.
Police officers rushed to the area after receiving a tip-off that there was an assailant in the graveyard harassing people with a knife.
The assailant attacked officers who asked him to prove his identity, then grabbed gun from one of the officers. He opened fire at them, killing one officer and injuring the other.