News / Iraq / Syria / Turkey

Turkey says it captured sister of slain Daesh leader in Syria

Monday, 04 November 2019 10:10 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 04 November 2019 10:19 PM ]

An undated TV grab taken from a video released by Al-Furqan media. In the video, the chief of the Daesh terrorist group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi purportedly appears for the first time in five years in a propaganda video in an undisclosed location. (Photo by AFP)

A senior Turkish official says his country has captured the elder sister of the slain leader of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in what he calls an intelligence "gold mine" in northwestern Syria.

Little is known about the sister of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Turkish official said the 65-year-old known as Rasmiya Awad is suspected of being affiliated with the extremist group. He did not elaborate.

Awad was captured in a raid Monday evening on a trailer container she was living in with her family near the town of Azaz in Aleppo province. The area is part of the region administered by Turkey after it carried out a military incursion to chase away Daesh terrorists and Kurdish fighters starting 2016. Allied Syrian groups manage the area known as the Euphrates Shield zone.

The official said the sister was with her husband, daughter-in-law and five children. The adults are being interrogated, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government protocol.

"This kind of thing is an intelligence gold mine. What she knows about (Daesh) can significantly expand our understanding of the group and help us catch more bad guys," the official said.

In a televised address on October 27, US President Donald Trump announced that Baghdadi had blown himself up and died "like a dog" after American forces trapped him inside a dead-end tunnel during a raid in Syria’s northwestern Idlib Province.

PressTV-Trump: Al-Baghdadi blew himself up, died 'like a dog'

President Trump says Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi "died like a dog" after blowing himself and three children up inside a tunnel.

The president said the Daesh leader detonated his suicide vest while “crying and whimpering” during an overnight raid by American special ops forces in Syria.

The raid was a major blow to the group, which has lost territories it held in Syria and Iraq.

Many Daesh members have escaped through smuggling routes to northwestern Syria in the final days of battle ahead of the group's territorial defeat earlier this year, while others have melted into the desert in Syria or Iraq.

The reclusive leader al-Baghdadi was known to be close to one of his brothers, known by his nom de guerre Abu Hamza.

Al-Baghdadi's aide, a Saudi, was killed hours after the raid, also in northwestern Syria. The group named a successor to al-Baghdadi days later, but little is known about him or how the group's structure has been affected by the successive blows.

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