“On May 21, the Military Operations Teams (MOT) of our SDF forces conducted a precise and special security operation targeting one of the key leaders of ISIS cells in the northern countryside of Raqqa, known as Ayman Abdel Moati, aka Yacoub Al-Hadidi or Osama Al-Qurashi,” the SDF said in a statement.
Moati was the terror group’s “military official in Raqqa and the planner of all terrorist acts in Raqqa and its countryside, including bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and intimidation of civilians,” according to the SDF.
His personal documents and mobile phones, along with a variety of ammunition, were also seized during the operation.
On Tuesday, the SDF had said it arrested two “dangerous” ISIS leaders in Qamishli and Raqqa.
ISIS rose to power and seized swathes of Iraqi and Syrian land in a brazen offensive in 2014, declaring a so-called “caliphate.” While the group was declared territorially defeated in Syria in 2019, it continues to pose serious security risks through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions, especially across the vast expanse of the Syrian desert as well as several Iraqi provinces.
The US-backed SDF, who control northeast Syria (Rojava), fought the lion’s share of the battle against ISIS and arrested thousands of the terror group’s fighters along with their wives and children when they crushed ISIS territorially and took the group’s last stronghold in Syria in 2019.
Mazloum Abdi, commander-in-chief of the SDF, said during an event on Saturday that the “partnership” continues between his forces and the global coalition against ISIS.
