Six killed in shootout between Turkish police and IS suspects

Four suspected Islamic State militants and two Turkish police officers were killed Monday in a shootout in Diyarbakir, the main city in the Kurdish-majority southeast, security services said.

Police had launched dawn raids on several houses in a district of the city where jihadists were thought to be hiding out when the militants opened fire, a security source said.

A heavy gun battle was still going on, an AFP journalist at the scene said, with police fearing other militants could be holed up in the area.

The authorities suspect the group is behind the October 10 double suicide bombings on a pro-Kurdish rally in Ankara that killed 102 people in the country’s worst ever attack.

A massive police hunt was under way over the weekend for a suspected IS cell that included a German woman allegedly plotting to carry out other attacks, Turkish media reported.

Police have been rounding up many suspected jihadists in the past two weeks, with four accused of taking part in the Ankara attacks.