Turkey thwarts attack, nets 15 Al Qaeda suspects

Turkish police have thwarted an imminent attack and arrested 15 suspected Al Qaeda members in the past two days, the interior ministry said Tuesday.

One man was arrested Monday in a suburb of the capital Ankara “as he was about to carry out an operation,” a statement said without elaborating.

“Several weapons and ammunition, as well as documents belonging to the organisation were seized,” it added.

The interior ministry said 14 other suspects were subsequently detained in and around Ankara as well as in the northwestern towns of Bursa and Yalova.

A Turkish Al Qaeda cell was blamed by the authorities for 2003 attacks in Istanbul on two synagogues, the British consulate and the HSBC bank that left 63 dead, including the consul.

Last year, the man who took over from Osama bin Laden as the head of the terror network, Egypt’s Ayman Al Zawahiri, issued clear threats against Turkey as it prepared to assume command of the NATO force in Kabul.