Aswat al-Iraq: A total of 97 persons were arrested during a security operation in different parts of Basra province, the media office of Basra's police said on Wednesday. "On Wednesday, Basra police forces conducted a wide-scale security operation to search for wanted persons in different parts of the province," the office told Aswat al-Iraq. "Those arrested are wanted on criminal and terrorism-related charges," it added. Basra, 590 km (340 miles) south of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, has an estimated metropolitan population of 2,300,000 in 2008.