U.S. troops and Syrian partners captured an ISIS commander behind a jailbreak last week in Syria, three days after American servicemembers carried out a raid against ISIS fighters in Iraq.
U.S. and SDF troops captured Khaled Ahmed al-Dandal early on Sunday, Sept. 1, according to United States Central Command. Details on al-Dandal himself are slim, but he is believed to be an “ISIS facilitator” who helped plan a number of prison breaks in Syria, including an Aug. 29 prison break in Raqqa that freed five ISIS foreign fighters from the Raqqah Detention Facility.
The SDF, a Kurdish-led military coalition aligned with the United States, recaptured two of the five escaped prisoners, one Russian, one Libyan. Three remain unaccounted for, including another Russian and two Afghan fighters. ISIS is working to free its captured members and reconstitute its strength, CENTCOM said in its announcement on the operation.
“Over 9,000 ISIS detainees remain in over 20 SDF detention facilities in Syria, a literal and figurative ‘ISIS Army’ in detention. If a large number of these ISIS fighters escaped, it would pose an extreme danger to the region and beyond,” CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Eric Kurilla said in a release. “We will continue to work with the international community to repatriate these ISIS fighters to their countries of origin for final adjudication.”
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CENTCOM’s announcement was short on details on Sunday’s operation, including how close it was to Raqqa. The city had previously been the de-facto capital for the terror group before the SDF captured it in 2017. ISIS lost its last urban center, Baghouz, in 2019.
Approximately 900 American servicemembers are operating in Syria.
The operation comes three days after American and Iraqi forces launched a raid on ISIS fighters in Iraq’s Anbar Province. CENTCOM reported that 15 ISIS members were killed in the operation (Iraq’s military reported 14) and that seven Americans were injured. Iraq has been carrying out followup missions over the weekend.
Despite losing their centers of territory years ago, ISIS remains active throughout Iraq and Syria. The number of terror attacks carried out by the group in those two countries this year is up from this same time last year.
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