“The Military Operations Teams (MOT) of our SDF forces have conducted two precise security operations that resulted in capturing two ISIS leaders in the cities of Qamishlo and Raqqa,” read a statement from the SDF.
The two leaders were identified as Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qurashi, going under the alias of Abu Moaz al-Kurdi, and Ahmed Thamer al-Muhammad. Quashi was arrested in Qamishli, and Muhammad was arrested in Raqqa.
According to the statement, Qurashi was involved in an explosive car attack in the al-Shuhail town in Deir ez-Zor.
ISIS rose to power and seized swathes of Iraqi and Syrian land in a brazen offensive in 2014, declaring a so-called “caliphate.”
While the group was declared territorially defeated in 2017 and 2019 respectively, it continues to pose serious security risks through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions, especially across the vast expanses of the Syrian desert as well as several Iraqi provinces.
The Kurdish-led and US-backed SDF, who control northeast Syria (Rojava), fought the lion’s share of the battle against ISIS and arrested thousands of the terror group’s fighters along with their wives and children when they crushed ISIS territorially and took the group’s last stronghold in Syria in 2019.
In late March, the SDF warned that ISIS still poses a threat to the world and the region as its defeat “requires dismantling its ideological breeding ground,”
