Five judges were wounded, two seriously, when a gunman shouting "Allah is great" opened fire during a session here of the Council of State, Turkey's highest administrative court, Ankara governor Kemal Onal said. Earlier media reports Wednesday said one judge had died in the attack by a man TV channels identified as lawyer Aslan Alpaslan, who was immediately arrested in possession of a handgun.
Alpaslan broke into the room where the 2nd Chamber of the Council was in session on the eighth floor of the building and unloaded two clips from his automatic pistol, shouting "Allahu Akbar" -- God is Great -- the NTV and CNN-Turk news channels reported.
One of the badly injured judges, 2nd Chamber president Mustafa Birden, was known for his rulings confirming a ban on women's Islamic headscarves in the public insititutions and universities of Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim country with a strictly secular political system.
Sources at the nearby Hacettepe University Hospital where the wounded were taken said Birden was hit in the stomach and fellow judge Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin in the neck, CNN-Turk said.
Media reports said the assailant was armed with an Austrian-made Glock automatic pistol, which can pass through metal detectors without setting off the alarm.
Asked about a possible motive for the attack, Onal told reporters: "I don't know, I don't know at all."
