Istanbul – Turkish police on Wednesday detained 37 IS suspects in an anti-terror operations in provinces across Turkey.
The police also said another suspect was being held for carrying over five kg of explosives at the border with Syria.
The governor’s office in the southern province of Hatay said the Syrian citizen was caught on Tuesday trying to cross illegally into Turkey from Syria with 5.25 kg of TNT and nine detonators.
“Police detained 25 people in simultaneous raids in nine provinces including Istanbul overnight, targeting IS suspects who had been on a security watch-list for the past four months, the private.
In a separate set of operations, police detained 12 individuals, two of them are children including a 12-year-old Indonesian girl in the southern Adana province with suspected links to the IS,’’ Dogan news agency reported.
According to Turkish officials, Turkey has detained more than 5,000 IS suspects in recent years and deported some 3,290 foreign militants from 95 different countries.
It has also refused entry to at least 38,269 individuals. (NAN)