Turkey's justice minister has said two hostage takers who seized an Istanbul prosecutor had "held a gun to the nation" and vowed to hunt down the "dark forces" responsible, after all three were killed in a police rescue attempt.
Two members of the extreme leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) took prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz, 46, hostage in his office in Istanbul on Tuesday.
Mr Kiraz had been leading an investigation into the death last March of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan, who died nine months after falling into a coma from a head wound sustained from a police tear gas canister during anti-government protests in 2013.
The hostage-taking was an act of revenge for the teenager's death, the DHKP-C said on its website.
"We don't see this as an attack on our deceased prosecutor, but on the whole justice system. It is a gun directed at our nation," Justice Minister Kenan Ipek told mourners at a ceremony attended by hundreds of lawyers and judges.
"Our state is powerful enough to track down those behind these lowlifes. The fact these assassins are dead shouldn't put those nefarious and dark forces at ease," he said, as Mr Kiraz's coffin, draped with the red Turkish flag, stood on display in the courthouse foyer.
Separately, a gunman was detained by armed police after entering an office of the ruling AK Party in another Istanbul suburb and hanging a Turkish flag with the emblem of a sword added to it from a top-floor window.
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