Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) announced that it uncovered a “ghost network” of 56 operatives who were working for Israel’s Mossad, Turkey’s Daily Sabah reported on Monday.

According to the report, seven of the operatives were arrested, all of whom confessed to working for the Mossad.

The report added that MIT discovered that the 56 Mossad operatives were part of nine networks, with each network overseen by a Mossad agent in Tel Aviv.

The agents in Tel Aviv oversaw the operatives in Turkey who gathered information about targets in Lebanon and Syria through various surveillance methods, including tracing vehicle movements via GPS, hacking into password-protected networks, and identifying private locations.

The operatives also physically followed various targets and filmed meetings – an operation that, according to the report, “was overseen by an Israeli of Arab origin.” The spy network included citizens from several countries in the Middle East, who used various fake websites, in several languages – especially Arabic – to obtain locations and IP addresses.

One of the targets was a Hezbollah building in Beirut that houses senior political and military officials.

This is the third time in less than two years that Turkey has claimed to have busted Mossad cells on its territory. This past May, Turkish media reported that Turkish security authorities arrested 11 members of a cell who were working for Israel’s Mossad against Iranian targets, and in October 2021, Turkish media reported that Turkish authorities arrested 15 Arabs who allegedly worked for Israel’s Mossad.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)