Police foil NATO bomb plot in Turkey

Police arrested 16 people belonging to a militant Islamist group called Ansar al-Islam. They also seized guns, explosives and 4,000 compact discs featuring training instructions from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, CNN Turk reported on Monday.

The arrests were made in the town of Bursa, 160 miles south of Istanbul, it said.

No more details were immediately available.

Ansar al-Islam is a militant group from Kurdish northern Iraq accused by Washington of being an ally of al Qaeda and a force behind attacks on U.S. troops occupying Iraq.

Turkish police are stepping up security in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and commercial hub, before the NATO summit, where Iraq will feature on the leaders’ agenda.

Istanbul suffered a series of devastating suicide truck bomb attacks in November targeting four British and Jewish sites in which 61 people were killed.

Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for those attacks.