Turkey detains 125 more IS suspects in nationwide sweep
Turkish authorities continued nationwide operations against suspected Islamic State members, detaining 125 people in simultaneous raids in 25 provinces.
Last week, police detained hundreds of ISIS suspects in raids across the country to prevent possible attacks during Christmas and New Year celebrations.
Suspected members of an ISIS cell opened fire on police who carried out such a raid in the northwestern province of Yalova on Monday.
While six ISIS suspects and three police officers were killed in the conflict, eight police officers and a night watchman were injured when security forces raided a house used as a shelter. Authorities said all of the militants were Turkish citizens.
Minister of Internal Affairs Ali Yerlikaya said that Wednesday’s raids were coordinated by police and gendarmerie teams and were carried out in cities including Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa and Yalova.
Yerlikaya, in his social media post, said, “Those who target our brotherhood, unity and solidarity, those who try to exploit our faith, those who attack our values will face nothing but the power of our state and the unity of our nation.” he said.
ISIS has carried out a series of deadly attacks in Türkiye; The most important of these was the armed attack on a nightclub in Istanbul during New Year celebrations on January 1, 2017, which killed 39 people.
Turkey had carried out similar large-scale operations against suspected ISIS members in previous years; but the latest operation comes against the backdrop of a marked global resurgence, with a recent ISIS-inspired attack in Australia and attacks on US forces in neighboring Syria.
About 25 members of the Islamic State group have been killed or captured in Syria this month following an ambush in which two US soldiers and an American civilian translator were killed, the US military said on Tuesday.
US Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said in a statement on channel X that 11 missions had been carried out in the last 10 days, followed by the first attacks on ISIS weapons facilities and infrastructure on December 19, which hit 70 targets in central Syria.
Syrian security forces have also launched operations against ISIS in recent days; These include two raids on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus. Syrian officials said that Taha al-Zoubi, identified as the leader of ISIS in the Damascus region, was captured in these raids and Mohammed Shehad, one of ISIS’s senior commanders in Syria, was killed.
