Iraqis capture 5 top Islamic State leaders in cross-border raid

Cooperative raid with Syrians nets important militants.

spokesman Army Col. Ryan Dillon said, using the Arabic acronym for the extremist group.

A Pentagon spokesman, Marine Maj. Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway, said the U.S. credited Iraqi security forces with the militants’ capture BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces in “on the Iraq-Syria border.” coordination with U.S.-backed “These arrests are a sigSyrian forces have captured nificant blow to ISIS as we five senior Islamic State group continue to remove its lead- leaders, the U.S.-led coalition ership and fighters from the said Thursday in a statement. battlefield,” Rankine-Gallo-

The arrest was a “signifi- way said. cant blow to Daesh,” coalition IS fighters no longer con- trol significant pockets of territory inside Iraq, but do maintain a grip inside Syria along Iraq’s border.

The U.S. -led coalition supported Iraqi ground forces and Syrian fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces in the more than three-year war against IS.

After Iraqi forces retook the Iraqi city of Mosul from IS last summer, Syrian forces on the other side of the bor- der claimed a series of swift victories, but the campaign was stalled recently when Turkey launched a cross-bor- der raid into Syria’s north.

Earlier this month the coa- lition announced a drive to clear the final pockets of IS territory inside Syria.

U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted about the anti-IS raid Thursday, saying those arrested were the “five most wanted” IS “lead- ers.” It was unclear what criteria, if any, Trump was using to describe the IS operatives as the “five most wanted.”

A U.S. national security official said there were no indications that the operathe coalition named the IS tion had captured Abu Bakr fighters arrested. al-Baghdadi, the leader of IS IS fighters swept into Iraq who has long been the coain the summer of 2014, taklition’s top target. The offi- ing control of nearly a third cial wasn’t authorized to disof the country. At the height cuss the targets publicly and of the group’s power their requested anonymity. self-proclaimed caliphate

Last year the Pentagon said stretched from the edges of that there were “some indi- Aleppo in Syria to just north cators” that al-Baghdadi was of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. still alive a month after RusNow, with the group’s sia claimed to have killed physical caliphate largely him in a strike near the Syrdestroyed, anti-IS operaian city of Raqqa. None of the tions are increasingly focused statements released Thurs- on targeting the extremists’ day from the president or remaining leadership.