Al-Qamishli: Kurdish forces in Syria announced on Friday that they had captured about 100 jihadists during a week-long operation against cells of the Islamic State, following a deadly attack in the north of the country.
Six members of the Kurdish security forces and a jihadist were killed on December 26 in a failed attack claimed by the Islamic State on a headquarters of the Kurdish forces in Raqqa, targeting a prison where jihadists are being held.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, controlled by the Kurds) had subsequently declared a state of alert in the areas under their control in northern Syria, and had launched an operation to “pursue cells” of the Islamic State.
In a statement on Friday, they said they had searched 55 villages and farms, as well as “vast parts of the Syrian-Iraqi border”.
The operation allowed the “arrest of 154 wanted terrorists and criminals,” including 102 members of the Islamic State, and thwarted the attacks that the jihadist group had planned to launch on the cities of Qamishli and Hasakah during the holidays. Release.
The SDF indicated that the US-led international anti-jihadist coalition participated in the operation, which was not confirmed by the coalition.
With the support of this coalition, the defense and security forces led the fight against ISIS, which was defeated in successive attacks, in 2017 in Iraq and in 2019 in neighboring Syria.
But despite losing its strongholds in those two countries, the Islamic State continues to stage attacks there.
On December 30, 12 workers were killed in an oil field in an area controlled by the Syrian regime in an attack attributed to the Islamic State. A Kurdish fighter was killed on the same day in an ambush also attributed to the jihadist group.
Syria is fragmented by a war that began in 2011. Most of the territory has been seized by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but Syrian Kurdish forces control large areas in the north and northeast of the country.
