Iraqi troops arrest three IS militants while infiltrating from Syria
Iraqi troops arrest a suspected Islamic State militant
Anbar (IraqiNews.com) – Iraqi security forces arrested on Tuesday three Islamic State militants while trying to infiltrate from Syria into the Iraqi territories, a security source said.
Security forces spotted three members of the Islamic State terror group trying to sneak into Anbar province in western Iraq coming from Syria to carry out terrorist attacks against Iraqi civilians and troops, the source told the Arabic-language Almaalomah news website.
The source said that the three militants were successfully arrested and moved to a detention center for interrogation, adding that the security forces acted on precise intelligence data as they made the arrest.
Iraq declared the collapse of Islamic State’s territorial influence in November 2017 with the recapture of Rawa, a city on Anbar’s western borders with Syria, which was the group’s last bastion in Iraq.
IS declared a self-styled “caliphate” in a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014. A government campaign, backed by a U.S.-led international coalition and paramilitary forces, was launched in 2016 to retake IS-held regions, managing to retake all havens, most notably the city of Mosul, the group’s previously proclaimed capital.
In December 2017, former Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi declared final victory over the terrorist Islamic State group three years after the militant group captured about a third of Iraq’s territory.