ISIS Militants Kill 3 Police Officers in Turkey

A raid on a suspected safe house for the terrorist group Islamic State set off a clash that killed the police officers as well as six Turkish militants.

A raid by Turkish police on a suspected safe house for Islamic State militants led to armed clashes early Monday that killed three police officers and six militants, Turkey’s interior minister said.

The raid began before dawn in Yalova, a district in northwestern Turkey south of Istanbul, and was part of a broad crackdown this month on suspected militants across the country, said the minister, Ali Yerlikaya.

The terrorist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, once ruled large areas of Syria and Iraq — both of which border Turkey — and it inspired terrorist attacks across the globe. The group lost its last territorial foothold in Syria in 2019, but it has continued to operate on a smaller scale in parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

ISIS attacks in Turkey have been exceedingly rare in recent years. The government has announced periodic arrests of ISIS members.

“We will continue our fight against the killers with bloody hands who threaten the peace of our nation and the security of our state within our borders and beyond,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote on social media. It is unclear how many followers the Islamic State has in Turkey.

Last week, the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office said the authorities had detained 115 suspected ISIS members who were planning attacks targeting non-Muslims during Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.

Turkey is an overwhelmingly Muslim country.

Mr. Yerlikaya said the raid in Yalova was one of more than 100 operations against the group on Monday across 15 Turkish provinces.

When the police approached the house, the militants opened fire, he said. The security forces evacuated five women and six children from the house and cordoned off the area, cutting off supplies of natural gas and electricity.

In addition to the three police killed, nine security officers were injured, he said. The militants killed were all Turkish.

Video aired by the broadcaster NTV showed a two-story building with its upper floor charred. Neighbors told the channel that what appeared to be a large family with women and children had lived in the house and that they did not engage much with neighbors.

Yilmaz Tunc, the justice minister, wrote on social media that prosecutors were investigating the case and that five suspects had been detained.

Related Content