9 killed in shootout between Turkish police, IS
ANKARA: Turkey claimed it struck a major blow against an Islamic State group cell in a raid on Monday in which seven militants reportedly were killed. Two police officers also died in the clash in southeastern Turkey, police said.
The police officers were killed by booby-trap bombs as they broke down a door during a pre-dawn operation launched on “three or four houses” used by an IS cell in the city of Diyarbakir, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said.
A dozen suspected militants were detained, Kurtulmus said. Five other police officers were wounded during the raid.
“It was an important operation... An important DAESH group was neutralized,” Kurtulmus said, using an alternative name for IS.
Kurtulmus said police acted on intelligence collected by Turkish security agencies since Friday. It was not immediately clear if the operation was linked to two suicide bombings of a peace rally in the capital Ankara earlier this month that killed 102 people. One of the bombers was identified as an IS militant whose brother blew himself up in a similar deadly attack near Turkey’s border with Syria in July.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have suggested, however, that a “cocktail” of terror groups including IS, Turkey’s Kurdish rebels and others were behind the peace rally attack.
Analysts are skeptical about claims of Kurdish rebel involvement because many Kurdish activists attended the Oct. 10 peace rally, and some were among the dead and injured. Many see the claim as a government attempt to deflect blame for the attack which came weeks ahead of Turkey’s Nov. 1 election. AP
THE POLICE ACTED ON INFO COLLECTED BY SECURITY AGENCIES. SEVEN MILITANTS AND TWO POLICEMEN WERE KILLED IN THE OPERATION.