Man shot outside Israel embassy

A mentally disturbed Turkish man wielding a knife tried to storm the Israeli embassy in Ankara yesterday but was shot before reaching the building, Turkish and Israeli officials said.

The man, armed with a 12-inch knife, ran towards the embassy shouting slogans and was shot in the leg, the governor's office in the Turkish capital said in a statement.

It said initial investigations showed that the man, named as Osman Nuri Caliskan, "appeared to be mentally disturbed" and had no record of links with any militant group.

Suat Gencer, a florist working nearby, said he heard four shots and then ran to the embassy to see what had happened.

"I saw a man who had been shot in the leg. I didn't see a knife but other witnesses said he had a knife and he would set a bomb off," he told AFP at the scene.

Large numbers of police vehicles were at the scene and the local road was closed, an AFP correspondent said, while news channel CNN-Turk reported that a suspicious package was being investigated.

Israel's foreign ministry said the assailant was shot by a local guard and that all its embassy staff were safe.

"The assailant was wounded in the foot. We don't know if he was attacking police officers or the embassy itself," foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement. He added that the man reached the "outer perimeter" of the embassy and investigations were ongoing.

The incident came with foreign missions in Turkey on a state of high alert following a spate of attacks across the country this year blamed on jihadists and Kurdish militants.