|TOP|A 60 year old Italian Roman Catholic Priest named Andrea Santoro was shot dead in Ankara, Turkey, on Sunday by a teenage boy, just a few hours after Mass at Santa Maria Church.

According to police and witnesses the boy was shouting “God is Great” as he fled the scene.
Washington Post reports that a police officer, who refused to be named due to Turkish restrictions on civil servants speaking to journalists without prior authorisation, revealed that the police are searching for a boy of around 14 or 15 years old.

The official refused to comment on the possibility that the shooting was linked to the protests over the publication of caricatures depicting the Prophet Muhammad in several European newspapers.

Earlier the same day, hundreds of Turks protested in Istanbul against the cartoons.

|AD|The Governor of Trabzon, Huseyin Yavuzdemir said: "Whether the killing is linked to the caricatures will emerge when the culprit has been caught."

The Washington Post reported that a woman who answered the telephone at the Church said that Santoro was inside the Church when he was attacked, with Prosecutor Burhan Cobanoglu reporting the priest was shot twice from behind, in the heart and the liver.

Monsignor Antonio Lucibello, the Pope’s envoy in Turkey said that he had spoken to a witness on the telephone who claimed to have heard the shooter crying “Allah Akbar” (God is Great) as he fled.

The envoy did not wish to speculate on the killer’s motive, but pointed out that “no elements” existed to link the attack with the protests against the cartoons, reports the Washington Post.

Cemil Cicek, the Turkish Justice Minister, spoke for the Turkish Government saying "We condemn with hatred the fact that the murder was committed in a house of worship against a man of religion."