Turkey foils New Year attack plot

Turkish police on Wednesday detained two suspected "Islamic State" militants believed to have been planning suicide attacks during New Year celebrations in central Ankara.

The two men were thought to have been preparing an attack on Kizilay square in the centre of Ankara, where people usually gather to usher in the New Year. They had planned to strike two separate spots in the shopping and restaurant district - one outside a big shopping mall and the second in a street dotted with pubs.

Turkey has been on high alert since October when a double suicide bombing allegedly by the so-called "Islamic State" killed more than 100 people in Ankara in the worst terror attack in modern Turkey's history.

The arrests were made in a low-income neighborhood of Ankara, where police also seized suicide vests armed with a bomb, one bomb mechanism with ball bearings and one rucksack with bomb-making materials.

On Tuesday, Belgium prosecutors said they had arrested two suspects also alleged to have been plotting a terror attack on Brussels on New Year's Eve.

ap/jil (Reuters. AP, AFP)