ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—The Islamic State (ISIS) has been weakened by months of air strikes and the death of many of its commanders, says a militant arrested in Kirkuk last week.
“Everything is different from what it used to be. They are weakened now,” Saad Sulaiman Ali confirmed in an interview with Rudaw. “Hawija is disconnected from Mosul now. They are surrounded in both Hawija and Anbar,” noting that ISIS is lacking in weapons, ammunition and explosives.
Ali said that ISIS has now relocated its training camps to wooded areas near Hawija.
“Their training centers are also among those trees,” Ali claimed. “And they have camps in other places in the hills.”
He says he joined ISIS in 2014, shortly before the group captured most of Iraq’s Sunni heartland and he underwent 40 days of training at a camp somewhere between Riyaz and Hawija.
Ali’s first assignment was to join an attack unit led by Khaled Abush, nicknamed Abu Waleed from Nahrawan. His fellow militants included foreigners but he says that, now, the number of foreign fighters is dwindling, “Dozens of them have been killed.” His commanders were all Arabs.
His salary was 150,000 dinars a month.
As a member of the attack unit, Ali participated in many missions including one that he describes as “the foggy night attack,” aimed to take a refinery in Talqaz.
They launched the attack on the refinery with heavy weapons, including RPGs and machine-guns.
The attempt to take the refinery was foiled by coalition fighter jets but the militants did capture approximately 30 Peshmerga, from where they were taken to Hawija and then on to Mosul.
“A lot” of ISIS militants were killed that night, Ali said.
Ali was also involved in constructing bombs and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Suicide car bombs were prepared in the agricultural area of Jamalon in the Ryiaz region.
During his time with ISIS, he witnessed the executions of more than 300 security forces captured by the group in Kirkuk and Mosul. Their bodies were buried in a trench dug behind a checkpoint.
Ali believes they were policemen and soldiers, killed for the sole reason that they were employees of the Iraqi government.
Ali’s final mission was to join an undercover ISIS cell in Kirkuk, assigned to carry out bombings in the city. He carried out one car bombing near a group of police officers before being arrested by Kirkuk security forces.
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