BREAKING NEWS

Turkish leftist group claims responsibility for attack on Istanbul police

The Turkish far-left group DHKP-C has claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack at a police station in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district on Tuesday that killed one officer and wounded another.
A female suicide bomber entered the police station saying in English that she had lost her purse before blowing herself up inside the three-story building, across the square from the Aya Sofya museum and the Blue Mosque, which are among the main sites for millions of visitors to Istanbul each year.
In a statement posted on "The People's Cry" website hours after the attack, the group said the bombing was against the ruling AK Party over the killing of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan, who died in March last year after nine months in a coma from a head wound sustained during an anti-government protest.
"It is the same state which shot Berkin Elvan and which protects the thief ministers," the statement said, in an apparent reference to a Monday ruling of a parliamentary commission not to commit four ex-ministers to a higher court over graft allegations.
Turkey's Dec.17 graft probe swirled around the inner circle of then-prime minister Tayyip Erdogan and led to the resignation of the ministers of economy, interior and urbanization.