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Two masked attackers shot and killed one particular person throughout a church service on Sunday in Istanbul, Turkish officers mentioned. The motive was not instantly clear.
The assault came about round 11:40 a.m. on the Santa Maria church, an Italian Catholic church within the Sariyer district of Istanbul, the inside minister, Ali Yerlikaya, wrote on the social media platform X. Mr. Yerlikaya gave solely the sufferer’s initials, and mentioned that an investigation into the capturing was underway and that the authorities had been on the lookout for the assailants.
“Such provocations won’t ever be allowed in our nation,” Akif Cagatay Kilic, a prime adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, wrote on X. “The perpetrators might be caught as quickly as doable and held accountable earlier than justice.”
The federal government-appointed governor of Istanbul, Davut Gul, mentioned in televised remarks on the scene that the sufferer was a 52-year-old Turkish citizen.
“Two masked assailants went in, shot at somebody and that particular person was killed,” Mr. Gul mentioned.
In keeping with The Related Press, the sufferer’s nephew recognized him. The A.P. reported that the nephew mentioned the goal of the capturing was the church, not his uncle, who had “no connection to politics or (legal) organizations.” He added that his uncle had been invited to attend the church “and was a sufferer of destiny.”
Among the many crowd on the church was the Polish consul in Istanbul, Witold Lesniak, along with his spouse and two of his kids.
“We are going to discover the perpetrators ultimately, possibly inside 24 hours,” Mr. Erdogan mentioned in a telephone name to Mr. Lesniak and to the church’s priest, Anton Bulai, in keeping with a video of the telephone name that was launched by the president’s director of communications.
Pope Francis expressed sympathy for the Santa Maria church group on Sunday, and Italy’s overseas minister, Antonio Tajani, acknowledged his “sorrow and agency condemnation” of the killing in a publish on X.
Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, wrote on X, “We are going to by no means permit those that attempt to destroy our unity and peace by attacking the spiritual locations of our metropolis.”
The authorities didn’t present additional particulars in regards to the assault or about whether or not the assailants had been suspected of hyperlinks to any terrorist group.
In current a long time, Turkey, a predominantly Muslim nation with a secular state system, has skilled a number of assaults in opposition to Christian communities, usually by the nationalist fringe.
In 2007, a outstanding Turkish Armenian journalist, a part of the small Christian group in Turkey, was shot useless as he left his workplace in central Istanbul. That very same 12 months, three evangelical staff of a publishing home had been discovered with their throats slit. In 2006, an Italian priest was shot to demise within the northeastern province of Trabzon, and in 2007, one other Italian priest was stabbed in Izmir.
Individually, the Islamic State has been linked to a number of assaults in Turkey in recent times, together with a bloodbath at a nightclub in Istanbul in 2017, when a lone gunman killed dozens of individuals throughout New Yr’s celebrations.
Final month, Turkey arrested three folks suspected of belonging to the Islamic State terrorist group who, it mentioned, had been planning to assault church buildings, synagogues and the Iraqi Embassy within the nation, the state-run Anadolu information company reported. The information company mentioned that 29 different folks related to the obvious plotters had been additionally arrested.
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