Police have arrested nine suspected Islamic State militants in southern Turkey who were allegedly plotting a suicide bomb attack against a political party in Istanbul, officials said on Wednesday.
The IS suspects were planning the suicide bombing against an unidentified political party's offices in Istanbul, on the orders of senior IS members in Syria, the office of the governor of Gaziantep province said.
Two of the IS suspects were arrested after a brief car chase in the southern city of Gaziantep last Friday and the other seven in subsequent raids.
Turkey has recently began a wave of raids targeting IS, which it blames for several terrorist attacks, most recently a twin suicide blast that killed 102 people at a pro-Kurdish peace rally in the Turkish capital of Ankara on 10 October. Scores of suspects have been arrested in the operations.
There is "strong evidence" that an IS cell in Gaziantep carried out a spate of bombings culminating in the Ankara blasts, Turkish prosecutors said last week.
