BEIRUT– The US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian force handed over to Baghdad two Islamic State group militants suspected of involvement in mass killings of Iraqi soldiers in 2014, a war observer said on Friday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights report came a day after the Iraqi National Intelligence Service said it had brought three IS members back to the country from outside Iraq. The intelligence service did not provide further details.
The Islamic State group captured about 1,700 Iraqi soldiers after seizing Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit in 2014. The soldiers were trying to flee nearby Camp Speicher, a former U.S. base.
Shortly after taking Tikrit, IS released graphic images of IS militants shooting and killing soldiers.
Farhad Shami, spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, said the U.S.-backed force handed over two IS members to Iraq. It was not immediately clear where Iraqi authorities got the third suspect.
The 2014 killings, known as the Speicher massacre, sparked outrage across Iraq and partly fueled the mobilization of Shiite militias in the fight against IS, a Sunni extremist group.
In recent years, Iraq has tried and subsequently executed dozens of IS members for their role in the Speicher massacre.
The Observatory said the two IS members were among 20 recently captured in a joint operation with the US-led coalition in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, once the capital of the State group’s self-proclaimed caliphate. Islamic.
Despite their defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in March 2019, extremist sleeper cells remain active and have been carrying out deadly attacks against the SDF and Syrian government forces.
Shami said a car loaded with explosives and driven by a suicide bomber attempted on Friday night to storm a military checkpoint of the Deir el-Zour Military Council, a majority Arab faction that is part of the SDF, in the village. from Shuheil, in eastern Syria. Shami said that when guards tried to stop the car, the attacker blew himself up, killing three US-backed fighters.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was similar to previous explosions carried out by IS militants.
The SDF is holding more than 10,000 captured IS fighters in about two dozen detention centers, including 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them. The force says fighters from about 60 nationalities entered Syria years ago and were captured in battle.
Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria have said they will try IS detainees, although it is unclear when those trials will begin.
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Zeyad reported from Baghdad.
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