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19-05-2025
DAMASCUS/ ALEPPO: Syrian security forces have killed three ISIL (ISIS) fighters and arrested four others in Aleppo, authorities said, the first time the interim government has announced such an operation against the group in Syria’s second city.
The raids, launched by the General Security Department in coordination with the General Intelligence Service, targeted multiple ISIL sleeper cells operating across Aleppo, Syria’s Ministry of Interior said in a statement on Saturday.
One security officer was killed in the operation, it said.
Forces stormed the site and seized “explosive devices, an explosive vest and a number of General Security force uniforms”, the statement added.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the operation took place in Aleppo’s Haidariya district and that clashes also broke out in another neighborhood.
Interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who assumed power in Damascus in December, has long opposed ISIL. His forces battled the group’s self-declared caliphate during the Syrian war.
US President Donald Trump met al-Sharaa this week in Saudi Arabia and described him as an “attractive guy with a very strong past”.
Following the meeting, Washington announced that it would lift sanctions on Syria, a major policy shift and boost for al-Sharaa’s transitional government.
Al-Sharaa seized power in Damascus in December after his forces toppled Bashar al-Assad in a lightning offensive. Al-Sharaa cut ties with al-Qaeda in 2016.
The recent operation comes just months after Syrian authorities said they had foiled an ISIL bombing plot near the Sayeda Zeinab shrine, a key pilgrimage site for Shia Muslims south of Damascus.
Last week, Iraq has released more than 19,000 prisoners under a sweeping amnesty law designed to relieve pressure on its overcrowded prison system, including inmates convicted of being members of ISIL (ISIS).
The move offers legal reprieves to some individuals convicted on terrorism-related charges, judicial authorities said on Tuesday.
The law has also halted all executions, including for former ISIL members. The group once controlled nearly a third of Iraq’s territory after sweeping across the country in 2014, capturing major cities, including Mosul, Tikrit and Fallujah, before they were vanquished in 2017.
The years of their control killed thousands of people, displaced hundreds of thousands, decimated the Yazidi population and left vast areas in ruins. Many members were arrested as Iraqi forces retook ISIL-held areas.
The amnesty law, enacted in January, allows certain prisoners convicted of belonging to armed groups to seek release, a retrial or have their cases dismissed. However, those found guilty of killings linked to “extremism” are excluded from eligibility.
The legislation was strongly backed by Sunni lawmakers, many of whom have long argued that anti-terrorism laws disproportionately targeted Sunni communities in the years after Iraq’s clampdown on ISIL.
Detainees will now be permitted to request retrials if they claim their confessions were obtained through torture or coercion while in custody.
After a meeting in Baghdad chaired by Supreme Judicial Council President Faeq Zeidan, officials confirmed that 19,381 prisoners had been freed from January to April.
The total number of individuals benefitting from the law including those sentenced in absentia, granted bail or with arrest warrants lifted now stands at 93,597, according to a statement issued after the meeting. (Int’l News Desk)
