ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi security forces on Friday arrested three suspected members of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Sulaimani province in cooperation with local Kurdish security forces (Asayish), the country’s Security Media Cell announced. “As part of coordinated operations between the Counter-Terrorism Service, the Kurdistan Region Asayish directorate, and the Sulaimani Counter-Terrorism Forces, the heroes of the Counter-Terrorism Service were able to arrest 3 terrorists in Sulaimani province,” the cell said in a statement. It praised the cooperation between Iraqi and Kurdish security forces and said that “specific operations to arrest the remnants of the defeated ISIS terrorist gangs” will continue. ISIS seized control of swathes of Iraqi land in 2014. The group was declared territorially defeated in 2017 but it continues to carry out bombings, hit-and-run attacks, and abductions across several provinces. Thousands of people have been detained across Iraq since 2014 for suspected links to extremist groups, including ISIS, and hundreds have been executed. Earlier in July, Asayish arrested nine wanted ISIS members in Sulaimani province. On Friday, two ISIS militants were killed by Iraqi forces in Diyala province. Last Tuesday, state media announced the killing of at least three suspected ISIS militants in an Iraqi airstrike in Diyala. In late June, at least seven ISIS members were killed in two separate airstrikes in Salahaddin province, days after three ISIS members were killed in an operation in Kirkuk.
