A woman opened fire with a machinegun on a police post in Istanbul's central Taksim Square on Friday, then escaped on foot but there were no reports of causalities in the second incident of its kind in three weeks, Turkey's NTV television reported. The television footage showed armed police cordoning off a corner of the square. NTV said some police vehicles had been damaged in the attack, and that the woman had escaped on foot, leaving her weapon behind. Just over three weeks ago, a suicide bomber blew herself up at a police station in Istanbul's historic Sultanahmet district, killing one officer and wounding another. The hard-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) initially claimed responsibility for that attack but later retracted its statement. Some Turkish newspapers have suggested the attack was orchestrated by Islamist militants. Kurdish separatists, Islamist radicals and far-left groups have all staged deadly attacks in the past in Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city and a major tourist destination.
