ISTANBUL (AP) — Police in Istanbul have launched a “large-scale investigation” after a Palestinian was killed and two others were wounded in a shooting as they sat in a car, officials and media said Monday.

The killer dropped a handgun fitted with a silencer at the scene, the Istanbul Governor’s Office said in a brief statement.

The Demiroren News Agency reported that the man sitting in the driver's seat was killed and his friend seriously wounded in the shooting late Sunday. Another man, who the governor’s office described as the dead man’s bodyguard, was injured in the foot.

The killing was carried out by a masked assailant or assailants, the agency said. The victims were sitting on Dilaver Street in the Kagithane district of north Istanbul when the attack happened. It described the seriously wounded victim as a businessman.

Photographs of the scene showed a semi-automatic handgun with a silencer attached to the barrel lying on the sidewalk next to a white saloon car parked between two other vehicles.

The white car’s rear passenger door nearest the sidewalk appeared to have been punctured by several bullets.