One killed, five wounded in attack on Istanbul courthouse

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -One person was killed and five others were wounded when leftist militants shot at a police checkpoint in front of a courthouse in Istanbul on Tuesday, in what Turkey called an attempted terrorist attack.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said police had killed the two shooters, whom he said were believed to belong to the DHKP-C group.

The DHKP-C, the Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front, is an outlawed Marxist organisation considered a terrorist organisation by the United States, European Union, and Turkey.

It has been blamed for a string of attacks and suicide bombings in Turkey since 1990. Authorities have carried out several operations against the group over the years, detaining and killing dozens of its members.

Footage of the attack shows two shooters firing at the courthouse checkpoint with civilians around. It shows one of the shooters being killed while civilians escaped, and the other was shot dead by police behind a metal gate shortly afterwards.

Banu Polat, a witness, said there had first been an attack inside the courthouse, but authorities have not confirmed this or provided further details of the incident.

"The two terrorists were neutralised by our police officers on duty before they could reach their despicable aims," President Tayyip Erdogan told an event in the southeastern Kahramanmaras province.

Yerlikaya described the incident at the Caglayan Courthouse as "an attempted terror attack".

Erdogan said that one of the six people who were initially wounded, including three police officers, had died in hospital, but did not say whether the victim was a civilian or a police officer.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said prosecutors had launched an investigation into the attack.

Last month, masked Islamic State gunmen killed one person at a church in Istanbul during Sunday mass. Authorities have since captured several people suspected of being linked to the group or the attack.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Alex Richardson, Jonathan Spicer and Alison Williams)