POLICE detained nearly 1,000 people across Turkey today in a sweep targeting people with alleged links to Kurdish militants, days after a suicide bomb attack in the Turkish capital.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said that police carried out raids in 16 Turkish provinces, detaining people suspected of being part of the “intelligence structure” of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Mr Yerlikaya said that 928 people suspected of holding unlicensed firearms or being connected to firearms smuggling were arrested during the operation.

He claimed that 840 firearms were confiscated during the raids.

The PKK has led a decades-long insurgency in Turkey but has been labelled as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. 

Tens of thousands of people have died since the start of the conflict in 1984.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device near an entrance to the Interior Ministry hours before President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was set to address parliament as it returned from its summer recess. 

The PKK claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a website close to the group.

A second would-be bomber was killed in a shoot-out with police.

Two police officers were slightly wounded in the attack. 

The suspects arrived at the scene inside a vehicle seized from a veterinarian in the central Turkish city of Kayseri after shooting him in the head, officials said.

The PKK claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a news website close to the group, while Turkish authorities identified one of the assailants as a PKK militant. 

Hours later, Turkey’s air force carried out air strikes on suspected PKK sites in northern Iraq, where the group’s leadership is based. 

The Defence Ministry said that a large number of PKK militants had been “neutralised” in the strikes.

Mr Yerlikaya did not clarify whether the people rounded up on Tuesday were suspected of direct involvement in Sunday’s attack.