Woman killed in Turkey police operations

A woman has been killed in a wave of operations by Turkish police against terrorism suspects throughout the country.

The woman was gunned down in a shootout with police in the city of Istanbul, according to the official Anatolia news agency.

She was allegedly a member of the Marxist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C).

Operations have taken place in 13 cities, with 251 suspects detained so far, according to Anatolia.

The operation in Istanbul involved some 5,000 Turkish police forces who went into action on Friday to apprehend suspected members of the ISIL terror group and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The operation also targeted suspected members of the PKK's youth wing, The Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), and the DHKP-C, Anatolia added.

It is not yet clear how many people were arrested in the Istanbul operation, which also involved helicopters.

The Dogan news agency, meanwhile, reported that 140 addresses in 26 districts in Istanbul were attacked.

Meanwhile, 35 people linked with the PKK were reportedly arrested in police operations in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa.

Also in the capital, Ankara, police held 11 people following raids on 12 different addresses early Friday morning. Police sources said five of them had had links with the PKK while the rest were linked to ISIL.

The arrest campaign came after a bomb attack on Monday left 32 people dead in the Turkish town of Suruc on the border with Syria. The deadly bombing was reportedly claimed by ISIL.

Following the blast, violence in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast saw an upsurge as many people there accuse Turkish authorities of collaborating with ISIL. Ankara, however, denies the claim.

On Wednesday, two police were killed in southeast Turkey close to Syria, with the PKK claiming responsibility for the attack. The militant group said it sought revenge for the Suruc explosion.

Another policeman was killed in the majority Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Thursday.

Earlier on Friday, the Turkish government confirmed that its warplanes have launched attacks on targets inside Syria said to be the positions of ISIL Takfiri terrorists. 

This comes as Turkey is one of the main supporters of Takfiri militancy against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with reports showing that Ankara actively trains and arms the militants operating in Syria, and also facilitates the safe passage of foreign terrorists into the country, which has been gripped by crisis since 2011.

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