ANKARA // Turkish police on Sunday detained 400 suspected members of the ISIL extremist group in nationwide raids, including foreigners and those suspected of planning attacks, local news agencies reported.
The operation around the country saw 150 suspects detained in Sanliurfa in the southeast, 60 in the capital Ankara and dozens more arrests in provinces ranging from Bursa in the west to Bingol in the east, the Dogan and Anadolu news agencies reported.
Those held were mainly foreign nationals, the state-run Anadolu news agency said, without saying if they were linked to any suspected plot. The suspects were rounded up in simultaneous raids on the Sincan, Cubuk, Yenimahalle and Mamak districts of the capital, it said.
The arrests come just over a month after an attack on an Istanbul nightclub claimed by the extremist organisation.
Thirty-nine people were killed, mainly foreigners, on New Year's night when a gunman went on a rampage inside the plush Reina nightclub.
ISIL claimed the massacre, its first clear claim for a major attack in Turkey although it had been blamed for several bombings in 2016.
Police detained the suspected attacker, Abdulgadir Masharipov, an Uzbek national, on January 16 after more than two weeks on the run and authorities say he has confessed to the massacre.
The Hurriyet daily reported after the attack that ISIL also planned a simultaneous New Year's strike in Ankara but dropped the plot after arrests by the Turkish authorities.
Turkey was in 2016 shaken by a string of attacks blamed on ISIL and Kurdish militants that left hundreds dead.
* Agence France-Presse
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