Turkish security forces detained 94 people suspected of ties to Daesh [ISIS] in nationwide raids on Monday ahead of New Year celebrations, the official sources and the media outlets said, two months after the terror group's ringleader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in northern Syria.
Police have rounded up the militants in late December in the last two years, since New Year's Day in 2017 when a gunman killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub in an attack claimed by the Daesh militant group.
Counter-terror police carried out the operations in the central provinces of Ankara, Kayseri and Adana, and Batman in the southeast, state-owned Anadolu news agency reported. Istanbul police said it also made arrests.
At 5 a.m. (0200 GMT) in Batman, some 400 police officers detained 22 people in simultaneous raids on various addresses, seizing weapons, ammunition and documents, Anadolu said.
It said 30 Iraqis, two Syrians and one Moroccan were detained in Ankara. Nine Iraqi citizens who had operated in Syria and Iraq were detained in Kayseri, while four Syrian and two Iraqi citizens were detained in Adana, it added.
Istanbul police said 20 Turks and four foreign nationals were captured in separate raids aimed to prevent potential attacks by the group ahead of New Year's.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Oct. 27 that Daesh [ISIS] leader Baghdadi had been killed in a raid by U.S. special forces in northwest Syria.
Two days later, Turkish police detained dozens of Daesh suspects believed to have been plotting attacks targeting celebrations of Turkey's Republic Day celebrations.
The government has said it will have repatriated most of its Daesh detainees to their home countries by the end of the year.
Ankara had accused its European allies of being too slow to take back their citizens who travelled to the Middle East to join Daesh [ISIS].
