Iraqi insurgency

Turkey deported four terrorists of French nationality back to their home country on Jan. 28, the Interior Ministry announced.

The terrorists were deported as part of Turkey's ramped-up efforts to repatriate foreign terrorist fighters, the ministry said in a written statement.

At least five katyusha rockets landed in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Iraq's capital, some of which directly struck the U.S. embassy, caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi said early on Jan. 27.

A Frenchman has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for seeking to recruit dozens of youths to fight as jihadists in Syria and for leading a brigade of French-speaking Islamists in the war-torn country.
Mourad Fares, 35, fled Syria in 2014, and was arrested in Turkey and handed over to French authorities the same year.

Turkey deported a foreign terrorist to Denmark, according to the Turkish Interior Ministry on Jan. 16. 

Without naming the terrorist group, the ministry said in a statement that Turkey will continue returning foreign terrorists to their home countries.

Turkey deported nearly 780 foreign terrorists back to their countries in 2019.

Representatives of Iraqi Shia groups have decided to unite to expel U.S. forces from Iraq, a spokesman for one of them said on Jan. 14.

The decision to "unite and coordinate forces" was taken to fully liberate Iraq from U.S. forces, Nasr al-Shammari, from the Al Nujaba Movement, told Iraq's official news agency INA.

Turkey detained seven suspects linked to the ISIL terror group in the country's west, security sources said on Jan. 7.

Police in İzmir province conducted an operation to catch the suspects -- five of them are Syrian nationals -- who had entered Turkey from conflict zones.

Two vehicles near the airport in Baghdad were hit in airstrikes and on that occasion, in addition to the second most powerful man in Iran, Qassem Soleimani, the top leader of the umbrella Shiite organization People's Mobilization Force (PMF) Abu-Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed.

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.

The U.S. has carried out air strikes against a pro-Iran militant group in Iraq, killing 19 fighters, two days after a rocket attack that killed an American civilian contractor.

Turkey deported two foreign terrorist fighters back to their countries, the Netherlands, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.

In a statement, the ministry said that Turkey continues extraditing foreign terrorists.

The statement did not specify which terror group the fighters belonged to, but in recent months it has been stressing the return of ISIL terrorists.