Decades

Turkish police have detained 13 foreign national suspects allegedly planning terror attacks targeting New Year's celebrations on behalf of ISIL, said security sources on Dec. 31.

Early this morning anti-terror police units carried out raids at the addresses of suspects in the capital Ankara, said the sources, who asked not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media.

A director of the department responsible for Attica's motorways was sacked on Tuesday for omissions and mistakes that led to the shutdown of a section of the national highway connecting Athens to Lamia on Monday.

Terrorist group al-Shabaab on Dec. 30 evening claimed responsibility for Saturday's suicide truck bombing in Somalia that killed some 80 people, including two Turkish citizens, and wounded over 150 others.

According to RTS, the strong forces of the Gendarmerie are deployed in the village district of Malca and the final "tightening of the ring around the abductor" is being performed.
Last night, in the late evening, police also searched the village of Jasenovik, however, that search did not yield a result.

Eight ISIL suspects were apprehended in an anti-terror operation in the western Turkish province of Izmir, security sources said on Dec. 31

The suspects were nabbed in Torbalı and Tire districts of the province after an arrest warrant was issued by İzmir Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, said the sources who asked not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media.

"There are still many mass crimes, particularly in the eastern Bosnia area, whose perpetrators have not been charged as yet, although solid documentation about these crimes exists," said Vidovic.

She said that the state prosecution should focus its resources on these more serious cases rather than on "less extensive crimes and less significant cases in terms of perpetrators' rank".

The Israeli Security Cabinet on Dec. 29 voted to withhold $43 million of tax funds from the Palestinians, saying the money has been used to promote violence, Israeli media reported.

The sum represents funds that Israel says the Palestinians have used to pay the families of Palestinians who have been jailed or killed as a result of attacking Israel, according to various reports.

Turkish police on Dec. 30 detained 102 people with suspected links to ISIL in the countdown to New Year's Eve, state-run Anadolu Agency has reported.

Greece's new asylum law, which goes into effect on January 1, will facilitate the return of more people to Turkey under the terms of the 2016 EU-Turkey deal designed to curb migration across the Aegean, officials say.

A Turkish military plane on Dec. 29 evacuated 16 gravely wounded victims of a devastating bombing that killed 79 people and overwhelmed local health services, in the latest attack on a city dogged by insecurity.