Three people were detained in Istanbul on Wednesday evening in an operation targeting the terrorist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C). A team from the Istanbul Police Department's counterterrorism unit raided seven locations in the Sultangazi district where suspected members of the terrorist group were believed to be staying. Weapons were seized and three people were detained by the police during the operation. The area where the operation was conducted was temporarily closed off by the police.

A radical Turkish Marxist group claimed responsibility on Wednesday for twin attacks on the justice ministry and the headquarters of the ruling party in a statement posted on their Internet site. "Our warriors hit the justice ministry and the AKP headquarters... at the heart of Ankara on March 19," the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Front (DHKP-C) said on their Halkin Sesi website. Turkish authorities had already blamed the group for the simultaneous grenade and rocket attacks late Tuesday against the buildings, in which one person was slightly wounded.

ISTANBUL, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Police launched raids across Turkey early on Tuesday targeting a militant leftist group behind a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy, ordering the arrest of nearly 200 people, state-run Anatolian news agency reported. The nationwide operation came after a member of the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) blew himself up at an entrance of the U.S. embassy in Ankara on Feb. 1, killing a Turkish security guard.

Turkish police launched a massive nationwide crackdown Tuesday against a radical Marxist group which claimed a suicide bomb attack against the US embassy this month, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported. Police issued arrest warrants for 167 people in 28 cities as part of the operation against the Revolutionary People's Liberation Front (DHKP-C), which is classified as a terrorist organisation by the United States, Anatolia said. A Turkish guard at the US embassy in Ankara was killed in the February 1 attack and three other people including a journalist were wounded.