ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Security forces (Asayish) in Sulaimani announced the arrest of 11 Islamic State (ISIS) suspects on Wednesday, accusing them of planning to assassinate security officers in the Kurdistan Region. Asayish said in a statement that they were able to foil the plans of two ISIS groups who were “planning to assassinate many security commanders and carry out destructive actions in the Kurdistan Region.” It added that three of them are ISIS emirs. The operations were carried out in Sulaimani and Halabja provinces. Iraqi security forces and Sulaimani Asayish arrested 21 ISIS suspects on Monday as a result of a joint operation. ISIS seized control of swathes of Iraqi land in 2014. The group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017, but it continues to carry out bombings, hit-and-run attacks, and abductions across several provinces. Thousands of people have been detained across Iraq since 2014 for suspected links to extremist groups, including ISIS, and hundreds have been executed.
