November 13, 2015•Update: November 15, 2015
KOCAELI, Turkey
A gunman who took hostages at a bank in northwestern Turkey was captured Friday night in an operation, police said.
The police chief of Kocaeli province where the incident took place told Anadolu Agency on Saturday that the gunman had been strapped with explosives before he was overpowered.
Initially, police said that the gunman was thought to be Syrian but later it clarified that the gunman was a Turkish citizen.
"He did speak to us via a hostage and he had broken Turkish, so we thought he was Syrian but he is in fact a Turkish citizen," Police chief Levent Yarimel said.
Yarimel added that the suspect said he tried to rob the bank because his family had health problems and he needed the money.
He confirmed that all 12 hostages had been rescued and the bomb defused. "The rescued hostages are safe and sound, but the suspect is heavily wounded and has been hospitalized," Yarimel said.
He said that eight hostages had managed to escape through the bank's windows before police got in and saved the rest of them.
Officers negotiated with the gunman for over seven hours from around 5 p.m., local time Friday, but he refused to cooperate, leading to an operation that left him wounded and disarmed.
