US-led coalition air strike kills ‘IS financier’ in Syria

Syrian govt says frees 672 prisoners

WASHINGTON, June 24, (Agencies): The US-led coalition has killed an Islamic State financial facilitator in an air strike in Syria, officials said Friday.

Fawaz Muhammad Jubayr alRawi was killed in the June 16 strike in Albu Kamal in eastern Syria, the coalition said in a statement.

Rawi was a Syrian native and an “experienced terrorist financial facilitator” who had moved millions of dollars for the jihadists.

He owned a currency exchange in Albu Kamal, “which he used along with a network of global financial contacts to move money into and out of ISIS-controlled territory and across borders,” the statement read, using an alternate acronym for IS.

Albu Kamal sits on the border between Iraq and Syria and has also regularly been targeted in air strikes.

The US Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on al-Rawi and his company in December.

Meanwhile, the US military coalition fighting the Islamic State would welcome a concerted effort by the Syrian government or its Iranian-backed partner forces to defeat IS in its remaining strongholds in eastern Syria, a US spokesman said Friday.

Army Col Ryan Dillon, spokesman for the coalition, told reporters at the Pentagon that the US goal is to defeat IS wherever it exists. If others, including the Syrian government and its Iranian and Russian allies, want to fight the extremists as well, then “we absolutely have no problem with that,” he said, speaking from Baghdad.

“If it looks like they are making a concerted effort to move into ISIS-held areas, and if they show that they can do that, that is not a bad sign,” Dillon said, referring to forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad. “We are here to fight ISIS as a coalition, but if others want to fight ISIS and defeat them, then we absolutely have no problem with that.”

Washington severed diplomatic relations with Syria during the Obama administration, which insisted that Assad “must go.” More recently, Assad has strengthened his position, regaining key territory from weakened opposition forces.

The battlespace in Syria is getting more crowded and complex as IS-held territory shrinks, raising questions about how the various parties will interact or avoid one another. Syrian government troops, for example, have reached the Iraqi border in an area where IS leaders have been gathering. The area is far from the main battle lines of Syria’s civil war.

The US so far has shunned any cooperation with Assad and has partnered instead with local Arab and Kurdish forces in fighting IS. Those local forces, which the US calls the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, are currently fighting to recapture the extremists’ self-declared capital of Raqqa.

Last weekend, for the first time, the US shot down a Syrian fighter jet that had dropped bombs near the SDF. Two other times this month the US has shot down Iranian-made drones in southern Syria that were deemed to pose a threat to US and partner forces.

Key remaining IS territory includes the cities of Deir el-Zour and Abu Kamal, along the Euphrates River Valley.

Dillon said that as Syrian government forces move toward Abu Kamal, “if they want to fight ISIS in Abu Kamal and they have the capacity to do so, then that would be welcomed. We as a coalition are not in the land-grab business. We are in the killing-ISIS business. That is what we want to do, and if the Syrian regime wants to do that and they’re going to put forth a concerted effort and show that they are doing just that in Abu Kamal or Deir el-Zour or elsewhere, that means that we don’t have to do that in those places.”

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BEIRUT: Syria’s government said on Saturday it released 672 prisoners who had promised to accept the state’s authority, a move it said was aimed at bolstering a “reconciliation” process.

Reconciliation is the term the government uses for local deals with rebels for them to either disarm and accept its rule or to leave with small arms for other insurgent areas. “They have been released after promising not to do anything against the nation’s security or stability,” Justice Minister Hisham al-Shaar was quoted as saying by the official SANA news agency. He said most of the prisoners were from Damascus but there were others from across Syria, indicating the release was not linked to a particular deal regarding one rebel-held area.

SANA did not report what the freed detainees had been put in prison for, but some of those released told Reuters they were arrested for actions they took against the government.

Syria’s opposition says reconciliation deals are forced on areas after prolonged sieges and intense bombardment. The United Nations has warned they may be used to force people from their homes.