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WORLD BRIEFING / TURKEY

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Times Wire Reports

A police crackdown on radical groups in Istanbul led to a five-hour shootout with a leftist militant who hurled explosives and opened fire from an apartment building.

The militant attacked police as they closed in on him during a sweep against leftist, Kurdish and other radical groups operating in the city. Police rounded up more than 40 people in 60 overnight raids, and the governor of Turkey’s largest city said the suspects were planning “sensational armed attacks soon.”

The gunman, identified by the government as Orhan Yilmazkaya, a top member of the leftist group Revolutionary Headquarters, was killed along with a police officer and an onlooker in the shootout.

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