{"id":11371,"date":"2018-10-03T10:21:32","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T14:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/?p=11371"},"modified":"2018-10-03T11:10:07","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T15:10:07","slug":"iraqi-police-capture-top-is-members","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/iraqi-police-capture-top-is-members\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi police capture top IS members"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"line-height: 19.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span style=\"color: #222222;\">By IBRAHIM GRAY<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 19.5pt; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Iraqi forces in coordination with U.S.-backed Syrian forces have captured five senior Islamic State group leaders, the U.S.-led coalition said Thursday in a statement.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">The arrest was a \u201csignificant blow to Daesh,\u201d U.S. Army Col. Ryan Dillon, <\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">coalition spokesman, <\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">said, using the Arabic acronym for the extremist group.<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">IS fighters no longer control significant pockets of territory inside Iraq, but do maintain a grip inside Syria along Iraq\u2019s border.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">The U.S.-led coalition supported Iraqi ground forces and Syrian fighters known as the Syrian Democratic Forces in the more than three-year war against IS.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">After Iraqi forces retook the Iraqi city of Mosul from IS last summer, Syrian forces on the other side of the border claimed a series of swift victories, but the campaign was stalled recently when Turkey launched a cross-border raid into Syria\u2019s north.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Earlier this month the coalition announced a drive to clear the final pockets of IS territory inside Syria. U<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">.S. President Donald Trump tweeted about the anti-IS raid Thursday, saying those arrested were the \u201cfive most wanted\u201d IS \u201cleaders.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Last year the Pentagon said that there were \u201csome indicators\u201d that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was still alive a month after Russia claimed to have killed him in a strike near the Syrian city of Raqqa.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">None of the statements released Thursday from the president or the coalition named the IS fighters arrested.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"color: #222222;\">IS fighters swept into Iraq in the summer of 2014, taking control of nearly a third of the country. At the height of the group\u2019s power their self-proclaimed caliphate stretched from the edges of Aleppo in Syria to just north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 19.5pt; text-align: start; margin: 0in 0in 19.5pt 0in;\"><span style=\"color: #222222;\">Now, with the group\u2019s physical caliphate largely destroyed, anti-IS operations are increasingly focused on targeting the extremists\u2019 remaining leadership.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By IBRAHIM GRAY Iraqi forces in coordination with U.S.-backed Syrian forces have captured five senior Islamic State group leaders, the U.S.-led coalition said Thursday in a statement. The arrest was a \u201csignificant blow to Daesh,\u201d U.S. Army Col. Ryan Dillon, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/iraqi-police-capture-top-is-members\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[761],"tags":[35,420,59],"class_list":["post-11371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ibrahim-gray","tag-international","tag-terrorism","tag-war-reporting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11371"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11382,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11371\/revisions\/11382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}