Turkey detains 20 Daesh suspects: police

Turkish police walk in front of the Metropolitan Municipality headquarters in Diyarbakir, Turkey, August 19, 2019. (Reuters)

• Police carried out simultaneous raids Tuesday and Wednesday at 48 addresses in Istanbul

ISTANBUL: Turkey has detained almost two dozen suspected Daesh militants in Istanbul as it extends a crackdown on the group ahead of the New Year, police sources said Thursday.
Police carried out simultaneous raids Tuesday and Wednesday at 48 addresses in the country’s biggest city, the sources said, taking 20 Daesh suspects into custody.
Their nationalities were not revealed.
In 2017, a New Year’s Eve attack on an Istanbul nightclub that killed around 39 people was claimed by the Daesh group.
Since October, Turkey has boosted efforts to repatriate Daesh militants to their countries of origin, after launching a military offensive in northern Syria.
Ankara has criticized Western countries for refusing to take back citizens who left to join Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and repeatedly urges them to take responsibility for the militants.