US helicopter troops fighting with the Syrian Democratic Forces captured a local leader of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria on Saturday, the US military said. The official, identified as Batar, was “involved in planning attacks against (…) detention centers and manufacturing improvised explosive devices,” said the United States military command for the Middle East (Centcom ).
Since the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in 2019, several hundred American soldiers, deployed in northeastern Syria as part of the anti-jihadist coalition, continue to fight with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, dominated by the Kurds) and to target suspected ISIS members. No civilians or members of the US forces were killed or injured in the operation, Centcom added.
Four American soldiers were wounded Thursday evening in an earlier operation that killed an IS leader in northeastern Syria, identified as Hamza al-Homsi and who, according to Centcom, “oversaw the deadly terrorist network of the group in eastern Syria”. After jihadists lost their last territory to local Kurdish-led and coalition-backed forces in 2019, the last IS fighters in Syria have mostly retreated to desert hideouts in Syria. east of the country.
