Syrian forces backed by the United States coalition who are fighting Islamic State militants within Syria handed over close to 200 suspected terrorist to Iraq.
According to official sources, these militants have been given to the Iraqi military Wednesday evening, sources also specified that these accused members of the IS group are now being investigated in a secured area.
To date, this has been the largest handover from Syria regarding captured Islamic State militants.
It has also been confirmed that the SDF is still holding over 1000 international fighters within its jails, the vast majority are Europeans and Iraqis.
President Trump along with Kurdish Syrian forces asked these particular countries to take their nationalist back, however, SDF spokespeople say that they “can’t afford to keep these foreigners who were captured within Syria”, as very few of their own countries want these militants back.
Middle East headlines news team recently spoke with an Iraq official Thursday morning on conditions of anonymity. This official claims that SDF has in their custody over 20,000 suspected Iraqi Islamic State members in jails, that are located within Northern Syria.
This person further confirmed that these individuals might be transferred to their home countries in batches in the near future.
This hand over gesture is a direct result of a standoff between IS forces and Syrian forces who are backed by the United States coalition, all this is taking place very close to the Iraq border.
Several hundred individuals consisting of men, women and even very terrified kids who have been evacuated Wednesday afternoon from tent camps located on the Euphrates River.
This action is signaling a conclusion to the territorial control of the Islamic State militants who have declared themselves “Caliphate” who have controlled in the past 1/3 of Iraq and Syria.
As more vehicles have been dispatched early Thursday morning to this corridor that leads to camps to be evacuated, they were surprised to find that no civilians emerged.
An individual with the SDF truck convoy stated that “we thought more civilians will come out today and we sent 50 trucks over, we don’t know why they are not coming out”.
An Insider source said that “very few believe”, that ending the group’s territorial dispute will end or stop any threat by an organization that still attacks by using sleeper cells in both Iraq and Syria, “so we don’t see an end to this anytime soon”, they said.
