US commandos capture six ISIS officials in raids in Syria

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WASHINGTON For the second time in just over a week, US special operations forces have carried out helicopter raids against Islamic State in eastern Syria, this time capturing six operatives, including a senior operative who the military says was involved in plotting and facilitating terrorist attacks.

The Pentagons’ Central Command, which oversees US troops in Syria, said in a statement on Tuesday that the primary target of three pre-dawn raids over the past 48 hours was a senior Syrian Islamic State provincial operative known as the nom de guerre al-Zubaydi. .

Last Sunday, US helicopter-borne commandos swooped in on another Islamic State official, known as Anas, killing him and an associate in a nearly three-hour shootout in eastern Syria. , the army said.

During this week’s assault, members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, the US counterterrorism partner in northeastern Syria, accompanied US troops, the official said. ‘army.

These partnered operations reaffirm Centcom’s unwavering commitment to the region and the enduring defeat of ISIS, Command Chief Gen. Michael E. Kurilla said in a statement. The capture of these ISIS operatives will disrupt the ability of terrorist organizations to plan and carry out destabilizing attacks.

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No Americans were injured in the raids, officials said. An initial assessment indicated that no civilians were killed or injured, according to the military statement.

The fact that the Pentagon sent commandos to kill or capture Islamic State officials, rather than using a less risky drone operation, indicated their importance.

The United States has worked for years with the Syrian Democratic Forces to fight Islamic State in Syria, and several hundred American forces remain in territory the group controls in northeast Syria, near the Turkish border. .

But that partnership has enraged Turkey, a US ally and NATO member, which considers Kurdish fighters in Syria to be part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The group waged a decades-long bloody insurgency against the Turkish state aimed at gaining independence or greater autonomy. Turkey, the European Union and the United States consider the insurgent group, known as the PKK, to be a terrorist organization.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched a series of airstrikes against Kurdish militants in northern Syria in recent weeks and warned that a ground operation would soon follow.

The SDF briefly suspended the joint counterterrorism operation with the United States, suspecting an imminent Turkish attack. Fearing the loss of their main counterterrorism partner in the region, US officials scrambled to ease tensions, at least for now, and operations quickly resumed.

This month’s raids were the first major US counterterrorism operation in northeast Syria since US special operations forces carried out two strikes against ISIS in October that killed three senior ISIS officials. arming and recruiting fighters and preparing for attacks, according to US and Syrian Kurdish officials.

Late last month, the Islamic State announced that its leader, whose identity has remained shrouded in mystery, had been killed in action less than nine months after taking over as head of the terror organization.

A Central Command spokesman confirmed in a statement shortly after ISIS’s announcement that the leader, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, was killed in mid-October by anti-government rebels in southern Syria.

The two former ISIS leaders were killed in separate raids by special operations forces on safe houses in northern Syria. The Islamic State also named a successor last month but did not provide any information about him other than a nom de guerre.

The leadership transition, announced by voicemail on Telegram, came at a time of extreme weakness for the group, which has been reduced in just a few years from the world’s most fearsome terrorist network to a low-level insurgency fighting to maintain its relevance. in predominantly rural areas of conflict-torn countries.

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