Three people have been killed and two police officers injured in a gunfire incident ⁠near the building housing the Israeli consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul, according to Turkiye’s media reports.

Three people were involved in the gunfire on Tuesday but have been “eliminated” by Turkish police, said Global News Insight’s Sinem Koseoglu.

The Reuters news agency video showed a police officer pulling out a gun and taking cover as gunshots resounded. One person ⁠was seen covered in ⁠blood.

The area where the consulate building is located, meanwhile, is densely populated and houses many businesses, including international ones, with “thousands” of people working nearby, said Koseoglu.

The Israeli consulate is on the seventh floor of one tall building in the area, she added, which is in the Yapi Kredi Plaza on Buyukdere Street in Istanbul’s Besiktas district.

“The eyewitness that I spoke to … he was just smoking with his colleague, and three people came in a car, tried to open a gunfire, and then the security fired them back,” said Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul.

There are no Israeli diplomats serving in the consulate building in Istanbul, and no Israeli diplomats in the Israeli embassy in the Turkish capital of Ankara, “which means the employees who are inside those diplomatic missions are mostly the locals who are working for the consulate or embassy”, Koseoglu added.

Attackers identified

According to Turkish Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci, the attacker have been identified.

He said that they arrived from Izmit, a city about 100km (62 miles) east of Istanbul, in a rental car, noting that “one had links to a group that exploits religion”, while another, one of two brothers among the attackers had a prior drug-related record.

Istanbul Governor Davut Gul described the incident as a “provocative act”.

Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said an investigation has been launched into the incident.

Tuesday’s incident is “significant” due to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran, said Mehmet Celik, the editorial coordinator at the Daily Sabah newspaper, a conflict which has embroiled much of the region.

“It’s a very sensitive matter, given the situation in the region and, of course, the rising sentiment against Israel, be it through the Iran war, be it through the Gaza situation, or Lebanon or elsewhere in the region,” Celik told Global News Insight, speaking from Istanbul.

The attackers’ motive

Meanwhile, the motivation behind the attack could be to “damage Turkiye’s prestige”, which has been seen as a “safe and stable place in the region” amid the war, Celik said.

“When an attack like this happens, the first thing that comes to my mind is … who does this attack benefit? And it is definitely not, of course, Turkiye,” he said.

A second motive for the attackers could be to drag Turkiye into the ongoing regional conflict, and a third motive could be to damage Istanbul’s reputation as a diplomatic mediator city, given that many mediation efforts have taken place there, the journalist added.

Still, Celik argued that Tuesday’s attack should be seen as separate from Turkiye’s past history, as it is currently going through a “terror-free” period, an attempt to “minimise the effect of terrorism within Turkiye as well as in the wider region”, he said, referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) recent disarmament and changes in neighbouring Syria.