CAIRO: A powerful local tribe in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula says it killed eight suspected Daesh fighters in battle and captured three more.
The Tarabeen tribe has clashed repeatedly with a local Daesh affiliate in recent weeks, opening a new front against the insurgency raging in the northern Sinai, which borders Gaza and Israel.
Moussa Al-Delh, a senior member of the tribe, said the clashes broke out Tuesday in the town of Rafah along the Gaza border, and that no tribesmen were killed.
Egyptian security forces have been battling the extremists in the northern Sinai for years. The insurgency grew far more deadly following the military overthrow of an elected Islamist president in 2013. Daesh has claimed three recent church bombings on the mainland that killed dozens of worshippers.
Egypt tribesmen kill 8 suspected Daesh militants in Sinai
Egypt tribesmen kill 8 suspected Daesh militants in Sinai
Take back and prosecute your jailed Daesh militants, Iraq tells Europe
RAQQA: Baghdad on Friday urged European states to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who fought for Daesh, and who are now being moved to Iraq from detention camps in Syria.
Europeans were among 150 Daesh prisoners transferred so far by the US military from Kurdish custody in Syria. They were among an estimated 7,000 militants due to be moved across the border to Iraq as the Kurdish-led force that has held them for years relinquishes swaths of territory to the advancing Syrian army.
In a telephone call on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said European countries should take back and prosecute their nationals.
An Iraqi security official said the 150 so far transferred to Iraq were “all leaders of the Daesh group, and some of the most notorious criminals.” They included “Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis,” he said.
Another Iraqi security source said the group comprised “85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis, and people from the Caucasus region.”
They all took part in Daesh operations in Iraq, he said, and were now being held at a prison in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “non-Iraqi terrorists will be in Iraq temporarily.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces jailed thousands of militant fighters and detained tens of thousands of their relatives in camps as it pushed out Daesh in 2019 after five years of fighting.
