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Turkey detains 16 al-Qaeda suspects in simultaneous operations

05 November 2013 18:56 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. As part of an investigation into al-Qaeda terrorists in Turkey, police units have simultaneously raided several locations in four different provinces and taken 16 people into custody, APA reports quoting Todays Zaman.

Following a year-and-a-half-long investigation into the terrorist organization's members in Turkey by the Erzurum Prosecutor's Office, police units simultaneously raided several locations in the provinces of Erzincan, Konya, DiyarbakÄ±r and Ä°stanbul at 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday.

Police detained 12 people in Erzincan, two in Konya and one each in DiyarbakÄ±r and Ä°stanbul.

Operations against al-Qaeda members have recently gained speed. In late October, a man, T.Ö.T, was detained in Mardin province on the charge of being an al-Qaeda member; in early October, two others were taken into custody in Bursa for collecting militants for al-Qaeda linked groups in Syria and Afghanistan.

Turkey has been the target of al-Qaeda attacks that have killed large numbers of people. Police have been on alert since homegrown Islamist militants tied to al-Qaeda carried out suicide bombings targeting HSBC Bank and the British Consulate General in Ä°stanbul in 2003, killing 58 people and wounding 400 others. In 2008, an attack, which was blamed on al-Qaeda-affiliated militants, outside the US Consulate in Ä°stanbul left three assailants and three policemen dead.