Iraqi security forces arrest top level ISIS commanders

Two relatives including the uncle of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant group, were detained on Sunday after a security operation near the city of Samarra, state-owned Iraqi television cited a security source as saying.

“A group from the Regiment Special Assignments was able to arrest Baghdadi’s uncle, named Saleh Ibrahim Abdulmomen and niece’s husband Dhiya Nouri Sadoun,” the security source from the southern Dhi Qar governorate’s police said.

“The detainees are among the top level of ISIS commanders in Samarra,” the source added.

Meanwhile, Sheikh Oda al-Jughaifi from the western province of Anbar said on Sunday that a new military operation was launched to capture the Anbar province’s al-Baghdadi district from ISIS militants.

On Sunday, the U.S. military said Washington and its coalition partners conducted three air strikes against ISIS militants in Syria and eight in Iraq since Saturday.

The Combined Joint Task Force leading the air operations said the three strikes near Kobani in Syria “struck an ISIL large tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL building and two ISIL vehicles.” ISIL is an acronym for ISIS.

In Iraq, air strikes near Tal Afar, Mosul, Bayji, Hit and Sinjar struck tactical units, vehicles, a bulldozer, buildings and a checkpoint, the task force said.

On December 2, 2014, Lebanon’s security officials said they had detained the ISIL head’s wife and son at a border crossing with Syria. However, the Iraqi government later said she was not married to Baghdadi.

Baghdad said the woman, identified as Saja al-Dulaimi, was the daughter of a member of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front in Syria.

A day later, Lebanon’s Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk said Dulaimi is not Baghdadi's wife currently, adding, “She has been married three times: first to a man from the former Iraqi regime, with whom she had two sons.”

He further said that she was married to Baghdadi several years ago “for three months and she had a daughter with him.”

The Lebanese minister noted that DNA tests on her and the daughter confirmed that she is the mother of the girl who is Baghdadi's “daughter, based on DNA from Baghdadi from Iraq.”

The ISIL terrorists currently control large areas of Iraq and Syria. The group sent its militants into Iraq in June 2014, seizing large parts of land straddling the border between Syria and Iraq.


/129