TURKISH police have detained 23 suspects and seized 250kg of explosives in operations against an underground extreme left-wing militants in several cities including Istanbul, officials said today.
The operations followed nearly two years of intelligence gathering against the organisation, Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said according to the Anatolia news agency.
Mr Guler did not name the group but a police official said that it was the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (MLKP).
Police seized 39 weapons, 11 hand grenades and 250kg of explosives in the raids on MLKP hideouts in Istanbul, the western cities of Manisa and Aydin, the central city of Kayseri, the southern cities of Antalya and Mersin and Malatya in the southeast.
He said the suspects were found to be behind the murders of a policeman and three civilians as well as 76 bombings across the country.
MLKP, an offspring of the Turkish Communist Party/Marxist-Leninist (TKP-ML) set up in 1994, is a small armed group that seeks to overthrow Turkey’s political system and replace it with a Communist regime.
It is blacklisted by Ankara as a terrorist organisation.