The assassin who gunned down Russian
ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov has been named as a Turkish police
officer named Mevlut Mert Altintas, pictured, who was killed afterwards
Altintas, pictured left, stood behind Ambassador Karlov, centre, as he began his speech before shooting him dead
Russian media on Tuesday reacted with outrage to the killing.
'The
murderer was afraid to look him in the eye,' ran the banner frontpage
headline on pro-Kremlin paper Izvestiya above a dramatic picture of
Karlov with his killer looming behind.
'They did not shoot at Karlov. They shot at Russia,' Senator Konstantin Kosachev said in comments published alongside.
Karlov
was at the opening of a Russian photography exhibition in Ankara with
his wife when Altintas crying 'Aleppo' and 'Allahu Akbar' (God is
greatest) unleashed his attacker.
The killer had staked out the scene of the shooting exactly one week before, reports say.
Both
Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip
Erdogan called the attack a 'provocation' aimed at sabotaging ties that
have been patched up since a furious dispute over Ankara's downing of a
Russian jet in Syria in November 2015.
Putin
also said that the killing in Ankara was designed to undermine efforts
to find a settlement on the conflict in Syria that are currently being
spearheaded by Russia and Turkey.
The gunman claimed the assassination
was because of Russia's actions in Aleppo. He reportedly shouted in
Turkish: 'Don't forget Aleppo! Don't forget Syria!'
Marina Karlov mourns her husband laying her head on top of his flag-wrapped coffin during a ceremony at Esenboga airport
Marina broke down at her husband's
coffin. 'My husband did not do anything wrong, nobody even put any
threats against him, I would have known,' she told the secret services
after the shooting
The flag-wrapped coffin of late
Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov is carried to a plane during a
ceremony at Esenboga airport in Ankara on Tuesday
In
an interview with Izvestiya, the head of Russia's parliamentary
committee on foreign affairs, Leonid Slutsky, warned those who try to
drive a wedge between Russia and Turkey would fail.
'The
main thing is that there will not be a new round of tensions between
Russia and Turkey, no matter how much our opponents want this,' he said.
'This was a terrible tragedy, but interstate relations overall will not suffer from this.'
Other
outlets were, however, harsher toward Ankara - which state television
had portrayed as Russia's top foe in the wake of the jet's downing -
pointing out that Turkish authorities had been unable to protect the
Russian envoy.
'Responsibility
for the death of a foreign ambassador on its territory always lies with
the host country,' Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid wrote, adding that the
murder was 'yet another powerful blow' to the reputation of Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.