Turkish Police Clash With Suspected IS Militants

The operation on Monday targeted 17 houses suspected of harbouring IS militants, with 7 suspects and two police officers killed in the raid, while 12 of the suspected IS militants were detained.

Turkish police on Monday entered several houses in a district of the southeastern city which they suspected were being used by ISIL, when the suspects opened fire, one source said.

Police and private security teams were out in force, with Turkey still on edge after the October 10 bombings in the heart of the capital, the worst in the country’s history.

Kurtulmus said authorities were trying to identify the dead militants and establish possible links to militants in other Turkish cities, and determine how many were Turkish and how many came from overseas.

But analysts slammed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s assertion that Isis and Kurdish rebels were working together, saying that co-operation was impossible when the groups were at war in Syria and noting that numerous victims were Kurds or supporters of the ethnic group. The AKP won three decisive general election victories in 2002, 2007 and 2011 but was stripped of its overall majority in June after losing support to a pro-Kurdish party.

The U.S.-supported Kurdish militia known as the YPG said on its official Facebook page that Turkish military shot at its forces deployed in the town of Tal Abyad twice Sunday, using mostly machine guns.

He said Bashar al-Assad would control all of Syria today if the formula under discussion were to be developed further, and added: “It can not go further, because Turkey can not leave the fate of its 911-kilometer border to other countries”.

AFP news agency says this is the initial battle with IS militants on Turkish land since air strikes were started by Turkey in July on IS targets.

Police have been rounding up many suspected jihadists in the past two weeks, with four accused of taking part in the Ankara attacks.