WASHINGTON — The U.S. navy mentioned Monday it had captured an operator for the Islamic State extremist group throughout a helicopter raid in northern Syria.
The operator, Abu Halil al-Fad’ani, “was assessed to have relationships all through the ISIS community within the area,” U.S. Central Command mentioned in a press release.
His seize on Saturday will increase the prospect that U.S. counterterrorism operations there’ll be capable to goal further members of the group, command spokesperson Lt. Col. Troy Garlock mentioned.
The U.S. has roughly 900 troops in Syria targeted on countering the remnants of the Islamic State group, which had held a large swath of Syria till 2019.
Information of the seize got here as U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces imposed a curfew after continued skirmishes with rival Arab militiamen. In line with stories from Syrian media and activists, the Syrian Democratic Forces imposed the curfew Monday in a number of cities in Deir el-Zour province, together with in Ziban, near the Iraqi border the place the People are primarily based. A whole bunch of U.S. troops have been there since 2015. The oil-rich province has Syria’s largest oilfields.
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Syria stays in a bloody 12-year civil struggle that has killed a half-million folks. The Syrian authorities of President Bashar Assad in Damascus sees the Kurdish-led forces as secessionist fighters and has denounced their alliance with the U.S. within the struggle towards the Islamic State militants and their self-ruled enclave in japanese Syria.
