Turkey detains over 900 IS militants in 2015

Updated: 2015-12-11 20:44

(Xinhua)

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ANKARA - Turkish security forces have detained a total of 913 Islamic State (IS) militants since January as they were trying to illegally cross through Turkey's border, private Dogan News Agency reported on Friday.

About 61 percent of the arrests of the IS members took place in the second half of 2015 as the Turkish military stepped up security measures on border with Syria, according to the report.

A security wall is being built along 900 kilometers along Syrian border, with barbed wire and security cameras installed, to prevent infiltration.

A crisis between Turkey and Iraq was triggered over the weekend after a Turkish battalion, equipped with armored vehicles, was deployed near the city of Mosul in order to train Iraqi paramilitary groups against IS militants.

Iraq contacted the five permanent members of the UN Security Council for condemning Turkey's deployment of troops on its soil, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

Baghdad also demanded an Arab League extraordinary meeting to "discuss the consequences of the Turkish breach (to Iraqi sovereignty) and adopt an Arab stance against it," according to a ministry spokesman.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Thursday that he will not pull troops out of Iraq for the moment.

Ankara claimed that sending troops to Iraq was in response to increasing skirmishes with the IS in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province which has been under IS control since June 2014.