ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraqi security forces late Tuesday captured an individual wearing an explosive belt near a Kurdish-owned restaurant in Ramadi city, the provincial capital of Iraq’s western Anbar province, authorities said, thwarting what they said was an imminent attack.
Iraq’s National Security Service said in a statement that its forces carried out a “precise and swift intelligence operation” that led to the arrest of a member of the Islamic State (ISIS) group in Anbar.
Detachment units of the service “successfully arrested a member of the ISIS terrorist group in the ‘5 Kilo’ area of Anbar province, who was wearing a suicide belt, before he could carry out any attacks," the Iraqi statement added.
The arrest took place close to the Hiwa Kurdi restaurant, owned by Kurdish resident Hiwa Adil. Speaking to Rudaw on Tuesday, Adil said the suspect was only a short distance away from his business at the time of the arrest.
“The perpetrator intended to blow himself up and was about 50 meters from my restaurant. We had no idea he planned to detonate himself until security forces arrived and arrested him,” he said.
“I have lived in Anbar since the 1980s, and I have never seen anything like this,” Adil added.
The Service further noted that the suspect was apprehended following close surveillance, stressing that the intelligence-led operation prevented a potentially deadly attack in a busy area of Ramadi.
The arrest comes as Iraq braces itself to receive ISIS prisoners previously held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria (Rojava).
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said Sunday that Baghdad is ready to receive the detainees, but warned that the burden should not fall on Iraq alone.
“We have decided that if there is a case of handing over these prisoners to Iraq, we are ready to receive them and transfer them to Iraqi prisons,” Hussein told reporters in Baghdad. However, he emphasized that “during our discussions with both the European Union and the United States, we stressed that the security and financial responsibility for transferring these detainees should not fall solely on the Iraqi government.”
Hussein added, “We are in the process of addressing this issue [of financial and security liabilities], and I have brought it to the Iraqi government.”
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced last week that 150 ISIS detainees had already been transferred from a detention facility in Rojava’s eastern Hasaka province to a secure location in Iraq, noting that up to 7,000 ISIS prisoners could eventually be moved.
Miqdad Miri, spokesperson for Iraq’s interior ministry, then elaborated that between 1,500 and 2,000 of those detainees are Iraqi nationals, with the remainder being foreign nationals. He said the prisoners would be distributed among prisons across Iraq, excluding the Kurdistan Region.
ISIS seized large swathes of Iraqi territory in 2014 and was defeated in 2017 after three years of fierce battles. Despite its defeat, the group continues to threaten security, particularly in disputed areas between Erbil and Baghdad, including Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Salahaddin provinces.
