Three killed in shooting near Israeli consulate in Turkiye

Three people have been killed and two police officers injured in a gunfire incident ⁠near the building housing the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, according to Turkiye’s media reports.

The area where the consulate building is located, meanwhile, is densely populated and houses many businesses, including international ones, with “thousands” of people working nearby, said.

The Israeli consulate is on the seventh floor of one tall building in the Yapi Kredi Plaza on Buyukdere Street in Istanbul’s Besiktas district.

There are no Israeli diplomats serving in the consulate building in Istanbul, and no Israeli diplomats in the Israeli embassy in the Turkish capital of Ankara, “which means the employees who are inside those diplomatic missions are mostly the locals who are working for the consulate or embassy”, Koseoglu added.

According to Turkish Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci, the attacker has been identified.

He said that they arrived from Izmit, a city about 100km (62 miles) east of Istanbul, in a rental car, noting that “one had links to a group that exploits religion”, while another, one of two brothers among the attackers had a prior drug-related record.