Turkey kills one ISIL suspect, captures four alive

ANKARA

Turkey has killed a suspected member of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and captured two others alive near its southern border, as border security efforts were stepped up following two deadly bombings in the first quarter of the year.

One suspected member of ISIL was killed and two others were captured alive late on Feb. 25 ahead of their attempt to cross into Syria from Oğuzeli, a district in Turkey’s southeastern border province of Gaziantep, the Turkish General Staff said in a written statement on Feb. 26. The three were all foreign nationals, it added.

The general staff said in a separate statement on the same day that two other suspected members of ISIL were captured in the Elbeyli district of the southern province of Kilis on Feb. 25 ahead of an attempt to cross into Syria to join ISIL. One of them was a foreign national, it added. 

ISIL was blamed for three deadly bombings in Turkey during the second half of 2015. Two ISIL-linked suicide bombers killed four people in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on June 5, 2015, detonating themselves at a Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) rally. Another killed 33 civilians on July 20, 2015, in the southeastern district of Suruç. 

Later on Oct. 10, 2015, two suicide bombers killed at least 100 people attending a peace rally in Ankara, in the deadliest terrorist attack in Turkey’s history.