A gunman who shot and killed the Russian ambassador to Turkey on Monday shouted in the immediate aftermath of the shooting for attention to be paid to Syria and the besieged city of Aleppo.
Video of the incident showed the gunman, 22-year-old Mevlut Mert Altintas, yelling "God is greatest" in Arabic over the fallen Russian ambassador, Andrey Karlov, at the Museum of Modern Art in Ankara, Turkey.
"Don’t forget Aleppo. Don't forget Syria. Don't forget Aleppo. Don't forget Syria," the gunman also yelled in Turkish. "Until these places are safe, you will not taste any safety either."
Altintas was a member of the riot police in Ankara, and used his police ID card to enter the building before the shooting, according to Interior Ministry sources.
He was killed after the shooting by Turkish anti-terrorism police, the Turkish Interior Ministry said.
After the incident, Altintas' mother and sister were taken into custody in the Turkish city of Izmir.
A team of 18 investigators arrived in Ankara from Moscow on Tuesday to help investigate the assassination. The team includes a prosecutor, one psychiatrist, several security experts and a number of autopsy specialists.
Turkey's foreign minister announced that the street where the Russian embassy is located will be renamed after Karlov.
There have been numerous prominent protests in Turkey against Russia's role in Syria and the country's support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The shooting occurred as Syrian rebels, the Syrian government and its allies agreed to a deal to allow thousands of civilians and fighters trapped in eastern Aleppo to leave the area.
About 7,000 people have been evacuated from Aleppo since Sunday night, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Syria.
The evacuation was allowed under the condition that about 4,000 civilians, including the wounded in Foua and Kefraya, two pro-government Shiite villages surrounded by opposition forces, also be evacuated. Convoys of 500 evacuees, including sick civilians and orphans, left Foua and Kefraya, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the ICRC said. More buses are expected to arrive in the two villages to continue evacuations.
The U.N. Security Council met in New York today and voted unanimously for a resolution urging the immediate deployment of U.N. observers to Aleppo. French officials said it is crucial to allow the observers to prevent mass atrocities by Syrian forces and militias.
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