ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — An Islamic State (ISIS) leader was arrested in the eastern province of Hasaka in northeast Syria (Rojava) by internal security forces (Asayish), the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Saturday.
The Asayish forces detained a “leading ISIS operative east of Hasaka,” read a tweet from the SDF.
Weapons and equipment were also seized, they added.
ISIS seized control of large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014. The last of its so-called caliphate was defeated in Syria in 2019, but the group remains a threat on both sides of the border, particularly in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor, which is controlled by both the SDF and regime forces.
Another ISIS member was detained in the east of Deir ez-Zor on the same day.
The SDF arrested 24 ISIS suspects across 53 locations in late May.
The terror group maintains a “significant presence” in rural farming areas under SDF control, the Pentagon said in its latest quarterly report on anti-ISIS operations.
A total of 34 operations were conducted against ISIS in the first half of this year, the SDF said on Wednesday, with 245 suspects arrested and three killed.
