(MENAFN- Arab Times) US Army special forces killed an Islamic State commander in a daring night raid, the White House said Saturday, in the first publicly confirmed American ground operation targeting jihadists in Syria. US commandos have entered Syria before, for example last year on a failed bid to rescue Western hostages, but this week's operation appeared to mark a departure in missions targeting the militants. In the course of the raid, a Yazidi woman who had apparently been enslaved by the couple was rescued and the IS commander's wife - herself allegedly a member of the group - was captured.
The decision to send commandos to strike the inner circle of the IS group in was an unexpected move by the Americans, who have so far fought the extremists almost entirely from the air. On orders from President Barack Obama, elite troops from the US Army's Delta special operations forces based in Iraq sought to capture the IS militant Abu Sayyaf, who oversaw oil smuggling for the jihadists. "During the course of the operation, Abu Sayyaf was killed when he engaged US forces," a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, said. His wife, Umm Sayyaf, also suspected of being a member of the IS group, was captured, Meehan said. "The operation also led to the freeing of a young Yazidi woman who appears to have been held as a slave by the couple. We intend to reunite her with her family as soon as feasible," she added. The Yazidis, a religious minority in northwest Iraq with ancient origins, have been persecuted by jihadists and rights groups say Yazidi women have been kidnapped, raped and sold as slaves. The IS militant's wife is under "US military detention in Iraq" but American officials had not yet decided on her ultimate legal fate. US officials, the White House said, suspect she "played an important role in ISIL's terrorist activities, and may have been complicit in the enslavement of the young woman rescued last night." The American special forces went after Sayyaf in Al-Omar in eastern Syria, in a region that has one of the country's biggest oil fields. Members of the US Army's elite Delta special operations unit descended on Sayyaf's compound in Black Hawk helicopters and Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, a defense official told AFP.
Shields
IS militants at the multi-storey compound tried to use women and children as shields but US forces were able "separate the innocents," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. In a firefight, US troops killed "about a dozen" armed militants but were able to avoid causing civilian casualties, the official said. At one point, he said, fighting took place "at very close quarters, and there was hand-to-hand combat." Pentagon chief Ashton Carter hailed the raid as a triumph. "The operation represents another significant blow to ISIL, and it is a reminder that the United States will never waver in denying safe haven to terrorists who threaten our citizens, and those of our friends and allies," he said, using an alternative acronym for the IS. US forces suffered no casualties in the night raid, officials said, without offering details about how many troops were involved. At least one of the Black Hawk choppers used in the raid had bullet holes from IS gunfire. It was not the first time US officials acknowledged a covert raid inside Syria. US commandos last year tried to rescue an American journalist held hostage by the Islamic State, James Foley.
But the operation failed, and Foley and other hostages had been moved by the time the US forces arrived. Foley was later executed. Sayyaf, the senior militant targeted in the latest raid, was involved with IS military operations and had "a senior role in overseeing ISIL's illicit oil and gas operations," the White House said. The oil smuggling provides "a key source of revenue that enables the terrorist organization to carry out their brutal tactics and oppress thousands of innocent civilians." Meanwhile, Islamic State fighters closed in on the last government-held positions in the Iraqi city of Ramadi Saturday after Baghdad vowed an air and ground counter-offensive. After seizing the Anbar provincial headquarters on Friday, the jihadist organisation said it unleashed another fleet of suicide car bombs on key positions in Ramadi.
Attack
"Three suicide attackers in armoured vehicles tried to break into the 8th Brigade base. The attack was repelled using armour-piercing rockets," said Ramadi Mayor Dalaf al-Kubaysi, one of the last officials still in the city. He said five soldiers were wounded. Most of the Iraqi government forces and Sunni tribesmen fighting alongside them are concentrated in that base and in the Anbar Operations Command across the Euphrates river. Civilians fled en masse as the jihadists took over several central neighbourhoods on Thursday and Friday and looked on the brink of claiming full control of the city. The loss of the capital of Anbar province, which Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had said would be the next target of government forces after wresting back Tikrit last month, would be a major setback.
After meeting top security officials in Baghdad on Friday, Abadi vowed his government would not abandon Ramadi.
The army sent reinforcements from Baghdad and elsewhere in Anbar, with local officials saying Iraqi and US-led coalition aircraft were also in action, but there was little sign of a major counteroffensive inside the city on Saturday. "Security forces in Ramadi are taking position against the attacks of DAESH, mainly in the areas of Malaab and Operations Command," Kubaysi said, using an Arab acronym for IS. "There are no military operations to take back the areas that were captured by DAESH," he said. Elsewhere, Jihadists from the Islamic State group seized control Saturday of the northern part of Syria's ancient desert city of Palmyra after fierce clashes with government forces, a monitoring group said. "IS advanced and took control of most of northern Palmyra, and there are fierce clashes happening now," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. He said 13 jihadist fighters were killed in ongoing clashes near the Islamic citadel in the city's west. Abdel Rahman had no details on regime casualties. Most of Palmyra's renowned ruins, including colonnaded streets and elaborately decorated tombs, lie to the southwest of the city.
The official Syrian news agency SANA quoted a miliary source as saying that regime forces had prevented IS fighters from seizing a hilltop southwest of the Islamic citadel. The head of Syria's antiquities department, Mamoum Abdulkarim, meanwhile voice concern for the ancient site. "I am living in a state of terror," Abdulkarim told AFP in a telephone call.
He said IS "will blow everything up. They will destroy everything," if the enter the site, adding that many of Palmyra's artefacts, like elaborate tombs, could not be moved. "If they enter the ancient ruins, it will be worse than when Palmyra was defeated in the time of Zenobia," said Abdulkarim. Zenobia ruled over Palmyra - a UNESCO world heritage site - as queen in the third century, but was dramatically defeated by the Romans. IS began its offensive on Palmyra on Wednesday and inched closer to the ancient metropolis on Thursday and Friday, executing at least 49 civilians over those two days according to the Observatory.
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