Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella grouping of Shia armed militias also known as Hashd al-Shaabi, said on Monday that it had detained two senior members of the Islamic State terrorist group (IS, outlawed in Russia) in the northern province of Nineveh
CAIRO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st June, 2020) Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella grouping of Shia armed militias also known as Hashd al-Shaabi, said on Monday that it had detained two senior members of the Islamic State terrorist group (IS, outlawed in Russia) in the northern province of Nineveh.
"During an operation, the PMF's intelligence service in the Nineveh province arrested two members of the IS' leadership," the press office said, adding that one of the two was responsible for manufacturing explosive devices in Nineveh.
In mid-May, the Iraqi armed forces launched a new wide-scale anti-terrorist operation, dubbed "Lions of al-Jazeera." The operation is taking place throughout territories of northwestern Iraq and northeastern Syria, including such provinces as Syria's Salah ad-Din and Iraq's Anbar and Nineveh, which share a border with Syria.
On May 20, Iraq's National Intelligence Service detained Abdullah Qardash, one of the IS' senior leaders and a possible successor to Abu Bakr Baghdadi, who has been killed. A spokesman of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), Sabal al-Nouman, told Sputnik that Qardash's arrest would help determine the group's funding resources and details on its further plans.
Following these developments, the CTS spokesman also told Sputnik that another IS terrorist, Mouataz al-Jabouri, the so-called Iraqi governor within the IS terrorist group system, had been killed in an airstrike launched by the US-led international coalition in Syria's Deir ez-Zor. According to the spokesman, the extremist was responsible for planning all external terrorism operations.
