VIENNA: Austrian police arrested 13 people and raided homes, prayer rooms and mosques around the country early Friday in a mass operation targeting suspected jihad recruiters, prosecutors said.

The operation in Vienna and the cities of Graz and Linz, involving some 900 police officers, followed a two-year investigation into several people suspected of recruiting young people to fight in Syria, they said.

Media reports said a Vienna-based Bosnian preacher, who was the main suspect, was among those arrested in the raids which began at 4:00 a.m. (0300GMT). Police also seized “terrorist propaganda,” files and money in various homes, said prosecutors in Graz, who were coordinating the operation. Beyond recruiting fighters, the daily Kronen Zeitung said that the suspects were under investigation for helping to finance the Islamic State group.

Official sources contacted by AFP neither confirmed nor denied that the raid was under way. Some 150 people have so far left Austria to join jihadists in Syria and Iraq, or have been stopped while trying to do so, according to the interior ministry. The case of two Austrian teenage girls who left for Syria in April, telling their parents that they wanted to “fight for Islam” there, especially grabbed headlines here.