Kurdish-led forces target ISIS smuggling network in Syria
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Wednesday announced that they had carried out a large-scale operation against an Islamic State smuggling network in Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zor province.
“Our Counter-Terrorism units carried out a wider operation against an ISIS sleeper-cell that were responsible for running a smuggling network of logistical equipment, weapons and other armory,” the SDF press office said in a statement, which added that multiple militants were captured in three separate operations in Diban, Busayra, and Hajin.
“Our forces targeted their logistical and weapons supply-lines as well as the ISIS members responsible for the network. The members of the smuggler-network posed a threat and carried out attacks on the population with the items that were being traded,” the SDF said.
As well as the arrest of the individuals suspected of being part of the smuggling network, said the statement, “A large number of weapons and armory and miscellaneous documents were seized during the operation.”
The SDF stated that the operation would have the effect of foiling future attempts of the group to carry out new attacks.
Col. Myles Caggins, spokesman for the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition, formally known as Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Resolve (CJTF-OIR), told Kurdistan 24 that the SDF “are tenacious in their pursuit of ISIS remnants.”
“Finding this weapons cache will hinder Daesh’s [Islamic State’s] ability to threaten the local civilian people.”
Caggins later called attention to the raids in a tweet, referring to the SDF as the coalition’s “security partners in Syria.”