U.S. Commandos Seize Six ISIS Officers in Raids in Syria

WASHINGTON — For the second time in simply over per week, U.S. Particular Operations forces carried out helicopter raids towards the Islamic State in jap Syria, capturing six operatives together with a senior official who the army stated was concerned in plotting and enabling terrorist assaults.

The Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees U.S. troops in Syria, stated in a press release on Tuesday that the principle goal of three predawn raids over the previous 48 hours was a senior Islamic State Syria provincial official generally known as al-Zubaydi.

On Dec. 11, helicopter-borne American commandos swooped in on one other ISIS official, generally known as Anas, killing him and an affiliate in an almost three-hour gun battle in jap Syria, the army stated.

On this week’s assault, personnel from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., the American counterterrorism associate in northeastern Syria, accompanied the U.S. troops, the army stated.

“These partnered operations reaffirm Centcom’s steadfast dedication to the area and the enduring defeat of ISIS,” Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the top of the command, stated in a press release. “The seize of those ISIS operatives will disrupt the terrorist group’s capability to additional plot and perform destabilizing assaults.”

The latest raids symbolize the most recent in a string of setbacks this yr for the Islamic State’s core management in Iraq and Syria, essentially the most severe because the finish of the jihadists’ so-called caliphate greater than three years in the past.

Late final month, the Islamic State introduced that its general chief, whose id has remained shrouded in thriller, had been killed in battle in Syria lower than 9 months after taking cost of the terrorist group.

Exterior the Center East, the group has skilled combined success. Its department in Afghanistan, which carried out a lethal assault towards American troops in Kabul in August 2021, is locked in a stalemate with the Taliban authorities. However ISIS fighters have struck extremely symbolic targets in Afghanistan, together with Russian and Chinese language pursuits.

Islamic State fighters, together with Qaeda cells, are gaining energy in West Africa, with the violence now threatening nations like Ghana, Togo and Benin. “I’m very preoccupied and apprehensive about this pattern of terrorism spreading south,” President Mohamed Bazoum of Niger stated in an interview in Washington final week.

General, although, Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst on the Soufan Group, a safety consulting agency based mostly in New York, stated the Islamic State “will proceed to current a risk, however that risk has been diminished considerably.”

No Individuals had been injured within the raids this week, officers stated. An preliminary evaluation indicated that no civilians had been killed or injured, the army assertion stated.

Rami Abdul Rahman, an official with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a bunch in Britain that tracks the battle by way of contacts in Syria, stated the raids had been performed between Deir al-Zour and Hasaka within the nation’s east.

The truth that the Pentagon despatched commandos to kill or seize the Islamic State officers, slightly than utilizing a much less dangerous drone operation, indicated their significance.

America has labored for years with the Syrian Democratic Forces to combat the Islamic State in Syria, and several other hundred U.S. forces stay in territory the group controls in northeastern Syria, close to the Turkish border.

However that partnership has enraged Turkey, a U.S. ally and member of NATO, which views Syria’s Kurdish fighters as a part of the Kurdistan Employees’ Social gathering. The group has fought a bloody, decades-long insurgency towards the Turkish state aimed toward gaining independence or higher autonomy. Turkey, the European Union and america take into account the rebel group, generally known as the P.Okay.Okay., a terrorist group.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has began a sequence of airstrikes towards Kurdish militants in northern Syria in latest weeks and warned {that a} floor operation would quickly comply with.

The S.D.F. briefly suspended the joint counterterrorism operation with america, suspecting an imminent Turkish assault. Fearing the lack of their most important counterterrorism associate within the area, American officers rushed to tamp down tensions, not less than for the second, and operations quickly resumed.

The raids this month had been the primary main American counterterrorism operation in northeastern Syria since U.S. Particular Operations forces carried out two strikes towards ISIS in October that killed three senior figures accountable for arming and recruiting fighters and plotting assaults, in line with American and Syrian Kurdish officers.

Late final month, after ISIS confirmed the dying of its chief, a Central Command spokesman confirmed in a press release that the chief, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, had been killed in mid-October by anti-government rebels in southern Syria.

The 2 earlier ISIS leaders had been killed in separate raids by Particular Operations forces on protected homes in northern Syria. The Islamic State additionally named a successor final month however offered no details about him aside from a nom de guerre.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.