ISTANBUL - Turkish police on Monday detained 46 people with alleged Al-Qaeda links in simultaneous operations in five provinces, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Twenty-five people were taken into custody in the central province of Konya, while the others were detained in Istanbul, neighbouring Kocaeli, the western province of Izmir and Mardin, in the southeast, the agency said.
Special forces participated in the early morning operation, the NTV news channel reported.
No other details were immediately available.
The operation follows the indictment last week of three people, one of them an Izmir lawyer who presented himself as the Al-Qaeda commander in Turkey and was allegedly planning bomb attacks.
A Turkish cell of the network is blamed for four suicide bombings in Istanbul -- at two synagogues, the British consulate and a British-owned bank -- in November 2003, which claimed 63 lives, left hundreds injured and caused massive destruction.
Seventy-three people, among them two Syrians, are currently on trial for the attacks.
01/29/2007 10:07 GMT