3 Men, Woman Kill Prosecutor in Istanbul

Three men and a woman ambushed and killed Istanbul’s top security prosecutor and two other men outside the prosecutor’s home Thursday. Two left-wing groups claimed responsibility.

Police said that Yasar Gunaydin, 58, was hit by 15 bullets as he climbed into his car in the coastal Kumkapi area not far from the old city’s great Ottoman monuments.

The attackers fired from two directions at the prosecutor’s Mercedes. His driver and guard were also killed in the morning attack.

“Who’s next now? My dad didn’t even have a flak jacket. Is this how the government protects its senior security members?” said one of Gunaydin’s two daughters, Meltem, at their home.

Police said they had found 24 spent cartridges fired from two automatic weapons in a narrow back street outside Gunaydin’s five-story apartment block.

In a telephone call to the Cumhuriyet newspaper, the Dev-Sol (Revolutionary Left) group said it had killed Gunaydin.

Another left-wing underground group, the Turkish People’s Liberation Party Front, also claimed, in a call to the Milliyet newspaper, that it killed Gunaydin.

The attack followed Monday’s slaying of a policewoman and two policemen in a patrol car in Istanbul. Three gunmen killed a policeman in the southern city of Adana the same day.

Hundreds of Istanbul police officers staged a demonstration at the funeral of their murdered colleagues Tuesday, shouting “Down with communism!” and “Enough of this silence!”