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Syrian Kurds hand over 200 Islamic State militants to Iraq: source

Syrian Kurds hand over  Islamic State militants to Iraq source
Syrian Kurds hand over 200 Islamic State militants to Iraq: source

2019-04-13 00:00:00 - Source: Iraq News

Syrian Kurdish forces (R) capture hundreds of Islamic State militants in northeast Syria, March 2019. Photo: AFP

BAGHDAD,— Iraqi security forces received Friday a batch of 200 Islamic State (IS) militants captured by the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in neighboring Syria, a security source said.

“Iraqi security forces have received 200 IS militants, who are Iraqi nationals, from the Kurdish-led SDF,” an officer from al-Jazira Operations Command, responsible for security in Iraq’s western province of Anbar, told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The officer said “the detainees were transferred to the prisons of the Interior Ministry for interrogation and prosecution by the Iraqi judiciary.”

With the latest batch of the IS detainees, Iraq has so far received four batches of IS militants captured and extradited by the SDF, bringing the number of detainees handed over to Iraq to 680, the officer added.

The handover process between Iraqi forces and the Syrian Kurdish forces has been carried out through cooperation between the Iraqi army and the Iraqi intelligence service, according to media reports.

In February, the Kurdish-led forces began extraditing the captured IS militants to Iraqi forces after the liberation of the last IS stronghold of al-Baghouz, which was the last IS-held area in the eastern Euphrates River region in Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zour province.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in March 2019 announced the defeat of the IS proto-state after tens of thousands of people streamed out of the jihadists’ last patch of territory, around the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border.

Iraq has offered the US-led coalition to put hundreds of accused foreign Islamists on trial in Baghdad in exchange for millions of dollars, three government sources have told AFP on Wednesday.

Around 1,000 suspected foreign ISIS fighters are in detention in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) in north-east Syria, in addition to around 9,000 foreign women and children in Kurdish-run camps there.

Syrian Kurds on Thursday announced a deal with Baghdad for 31,000 displaced Iraqis, mostly women and children, to return from camps in Syrian Kurdistan in northern Syria, to Iraq.

Syria’s Kurds have called for an international court in north-east Syria to try ISIS militants, but the US says countries should repatriate their own citizens.

U.S. has for years supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). But U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the pullout from Syria.

The Kurdish PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ considered the most effective fighting force against IS. The YPG, which make up the backbone of the SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.

In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.

Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | xinhua.net

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