Turkey detains 400 in anti-IS operations

Turkey's anti-terrorism police have detained over 440 people for alleged links to the Islamic State group, the state-run agency reported on Sunday.

February 05, 2017 11:38 pm | Updated 11:38 pm IST - ISTANBUL:

Turkey's anti-terrorism police have detained over 440 people for alleged links to the Islamic State group, the state-run agency reported on Sunday.

The Anadolu Agency said 60 IS suspects, the vast majority of them foreigners, were taken into custody early Sunday in the capital, Ankara.

It said a total of 445 people were detained in simultaneous pre-dawn police operations that spanned several cities, including Istanbul and Gaziantep, near the border with Syria.

The largest operation was in the southeast province of Sanliurfa, where police took into custody more than 100 suspects from multiple addresses and found materials relating to Islamic State militants.

Security forces also apprehended nine suspects who were allegedly preparing an attack in the northwestern city of Izmir.Anadolu did not give the nationalities of all those detained but there were 10 minors among the foreigners detained in Istanbul and the northwestern province of Kocaeli.

Turkey, which last year endured a failed coup attempt and dozens of bloody attacks linked to IS or Kurdish militants, has been stepping up its anti-terrorism efforts.

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