Austrians arrest 8 suspected IS members

VIENNA: Austrian police arrested eight suspected terrorists yesterday in a series of early morning raids in the country’s two largest cities that mobilised heavily armed Swat teams and hundreds of officers supporting them.

A statement from the public prosecutor’s office in Graz, one of the cities involved, said those detained were suspected of involvement with the Islamic State (IS) extremist group.

Police also struck simultaneously in Vienna, in twin operations that utilised 800 police officers. The raids come less than a week after police in Vienna detained a 17-year-old they describe as belonging to “radical Salafist” circles who they said has confessed to experimenting with building a bomb. But yesterday’s sweeps had been planned for “a longer time”, suggesting no link. Instead, they appeared connected to investigations of followers of a Serbian-born Islamic cleric sentenced last year in Graz to 20 years in prison for recruiting men to fight for IS. – ANA-AP