6 People Wounded and 2 Assailants Shot Dead during an Attempt to Attack a Turkish Courthouse

File photo: Two members of the police special forces patrol outside a police station after an attack in Istanbul, Türkiye, August 10, 2015. REUTERS/Huseyin Aldemir

Two people were shot dead while trying to attack a courthouse in Istanbul on Tuesday, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.
The man and woman were killed during an “attempt to attack” a security checkpoint at the Caglayan courthouse at 11.46 a.m. local time (0846GMT), Yerlikaya posted on social media, The Associated Press said.
Six people were injured in the incident, including three police officers. “I congratulate our heroic police officers. I wish a speedy recovery to our injured,” the minister added.
Caglayan, which is also known as the Istanbul Justice Palace, is a huge court complex in the Kagithane district on the city’s European side.
Yerlikaya later identified the attackers as members of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front, or DHKP/C, a far-left group that is considered a terrorist organization in Türkiye, the United States and the European Union.
The attack took place on the day when Türkiye was commemorating the anniversary of an earthquake in the country’s south that killed thousands of people.
The DHKP/C has been largely inactive in recent years. In March 2015, the group took a prosecutor hostage at the same courthouse, demanding details about the police killing of a teenager during anti-government protests the previous year.
Two gunmen died as police stormed the building, and the prosecutor later died of his injuries.
The group also claimed responsibility for a February 2013 suicide bomb attack on the US Embassy in Ankara in which a Turkish security guard was killed and four other people wounded.
Last month, a man was shot and killed at an Istanbul church in an attack that was claimed by the ISIS group.
Two men were later arrested on suspicion of killing Tuncer Cihan, 52, on Jan. 28 at the Santa Maria Church in the Buyukdere neighborhood. Dozens of suspected IS members and supporters also were detained.