News Digest

Gunman raids Turkish ruling party office one day after deadly shoot-out

Police in Turkey have detained a gunman who entered an office of Turkey’s ruling AK Party in an Istanbul suburb on Wednesday, the private Dogan news agency said, a day after a prosecutor in the city was shot dead as police tried to free him from hostage-takers. The man smashed windows on the top floor of the building in the Kartal district on Istanbul’s Asian side and hung out a flag before being detained. Dogan had initially reported that two armed intruders entered the AK Party office, but later revised its report.

When he (Mehmet Selim Kiraz) arrived he had gunshot wounds both to his head and his chest. His breathing and heart had stopped.

Turkish doctors in a statement regarding the death of Turkish prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz

Istanbul prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kirazand his two hostage-takers from the radical Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party–Front (DHKP-C) were killed after a six-hour standoff with police. The DHKP-C demands related to the investigation Kiraz was leading into the killing of teenager Berkin Elvan, who died in March last year after spending 269 days in a coma from injuries inflicted by police in anti-government protests in the summer of 2013.