5 top ISIS officials are captured in multinational sting led by U.S.

BAGHDAD — Five senior Islamic State officials have been captured, including a top aide to the group’s leader, in a complex cross-border sting carried out by Iraqi and American intelligence, two Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

The three-month operation, which tracked a group of senior Islamic State leaders who had been hiding in Syria and Turkey, represents a significant intelligence victory for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the extremist group and underscores the strengthening relationship between Washington and Baghdad.

Two Iraqi intelligence officials said those captured included four Iraqis and one Syrian whose responsibilities included governing the Islamic State’s territory around Deir el-Zour, Syria.

Iraq’s external intelligence agency published a statement confirming the arrests but did not mention any details of the role played by the Americans or the Turks. The two Iraqi intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Turkey did not immediately comment on the operation, and the White House declined to comment.

The developments quickly took over many Iraqi news broadcasts Wednesday night, with news anchors praising Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi for what the intelligence service called a “major victory.”

The two Iraqi officials said they had been tracking several of their targets for months, but the breakthrough came at the start of the year.

An Iraqi intelligence unit responsible for undercover missions had tracked an Iraqi man, Ismail Alwaan al-Ithawi, known by the nom de guerre Abu Zeid al-Iraqi, from Syria to the Turkish city of Sakarya, these officials said.

Ithawi, described by the Iraqis as a top aide to the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been in charge of fatwas, or religious rulings, in the Islamic State’s caliphate. He had been living in Turkey with his Syrian wife under his brother’s identity, one of these officials said.

The Iraqis sent the Turks an intelligence file they had amassed on Ithawi, and the Turkish security forces arrested him Feb. 15 and extradited him to Iraq, this official said.

After weeks of interrogation, Ithawi revealed the whereabouts of other ISIS leaders in hiding, the officials said.

The U.S.-led coalition used this information to launch an airstrike in mid-April that killed 39 suspected Islamic State members near Hajin, in the Deir el-Zour district of Syria.

The joint Iraqi-American intelligence team then set a trap, according to these officials. They persuaded Ithawi to contact several of his Islamic State colleagues in Syria and lure them across the border, the officials said. The Iraqi authorities were waiting, and arrested the group soon after they crossed the frontier.