Turkey: 10 foreign national Daesh/ISIS suspects nabbed

By Sertac Bulur, Izzet Mazi and Ali Cakmak

ANKARA / KAHRAMANMARAS, Turkey (AA) - Turkish security forces on Friday arrested 10 foreign nationals for their suspected links to the Daesh/ISIS terror group, security sources said.

The intelligence unit of police ascertained that a terror suspect, who was making bombs for the Daesh/ISIS, came to the Turkish capital Ankara.

They also discovered that the suspect, only known by the initial M., got into contact with two other Daesh/ISIS suspects, who had operated as so-called police in the terror group in Iraq and Syria.

Following an investigation, police found that the suspects, who also provided weapons for the terror group, started to operate a cell house in Ankara.

A further investigation revealed that the suspects formed a group of seven who had worked for the terror group earlier.

Police raided four addresses in Ankara in the early morning, and arrested seven Daesh/ISIS suspects.

The arrests came after the prosecutors in the capital issued warrants for all the suspects earlier in the day. The prosecutors said they sought the arrest of seven Syrian and Iraqi nationals who are members of the terror group and in contact with the terrorists in the field.

Separately, local gendarmerie forces arrested three Syrian national Daesh/ISIS suspects, who were active in Syria and took part in terrorist actions, in the southeastern Kahramanmaras province.

In 2013, Turkey became one of the first countries to declare Daesh/ISIS a terrorist group.

The country has since been attacked by the terror group multiple times, with over 300 people killed and hundreds more injured in at least 10 suicide bombings, seven bomb attacks, and four armed assaults.

In response, Turkey launched anti-terror operations at home and abroad to prevent further attacks.