Police detain 102 over suspected ISIL links

ANKARA

Turkish police on Dec. 30 detained 102 people with suspected links to ISIL in the countdown to New Year’s Eve, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported.

Police in the Central Anatolian Kayseri province detained nine Iraqi nationals in simultaneous operations over their terror activities in Iraq and Syria, said the sources who asked not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media.

In a separate operation, security forces in the eastern Batman province detained 22 suspects including the terror group’s head of the city.

In the northern Samsun province, 14 Iraqi nationals were also detained by the police forces of the province.

Police officers in the southern Adana province detained six suspects including four people of Syrian and two of Iraqi origin.

Also, in the northwestern Bursa province police officers detained 16 suspects since Dec. 23, including 13 Syrian nationals, over their links to the ISIL terror group

In Istanbul, police detained 24 suspects, including four foreign nationals during operations early Monday.

In a separate operation in southern Hatay province, police detained 11 suspects.

During the operations, weapons, ammunition, digital materials and organizational documents were also seized.

Police have rounded up suspected ISIL terrorists in late December in the last two years, since the New Year’s Day in 2017 when an ISIL attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul’s Ortaköy district claimed 39 lives.