Nearly 300 Daesh suspects held by Turkish courts

ANKARA

Nearly 300 suspected Daesh members were held in custody in the first nine months of the year, the Turkish prime minister’s office said Wednesday.

Out of more than 1,000 arrests, 285 were detained by courts across Turkey for membership of or providing assistance to Daesh, the office of public diplomacy said in a statement.

Over the same period, tons of explosives and bomb-making materials, including TNT and other chemicals, were seized, as well as firearms and grenades.

Mobile phones and hundreds of SIM cards were also confiscated.

Police operations have helped prevent several attacks as security forces stepped up operations in cities near the Syrian border, the statement added.

Turkey’s armed forces have bolstered the border to prevent recruits joining the militant group in Syria. Measures include a 383 kilometer (238 mile) ditch, a 74 km (46 mile) embankment and an 18 km (11 mile) concrete wall.

Nearly 200,000 people were arrested crossing the border between January and Oct. 22, the statement said. The figure does not include refugees.

Since Monday, when two Turkish police officers were killed in a raid on a Daesh gang in Diyarbakir, security forces have arrested 65 suspects in anti-terror raids across Konya, Kocaeli and Istanbul provinces, security sources said.

Daesh is said to have carried out the Oct. 10 Ankara bombing that killed 102 left-wing and pro-Kurdish protesters as well as the July 20 Suruc attack that killed 33.

It was also behind the bombings of HDP offices and a rally before the June 7 general election that killed four people, the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office said Wednesday.