ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Syria’s interior ministry on Thursday announced arresting at least nine Islamic State (ISIS) members, suspected of killing five Iraqi nationals in the northwestern province of Idlib.

Ghassan Mohammed Bakir, commander of internal security in Idlib province, said that their forces had carried out an operation in cooperation with the intelligence service, targeting an ISIS cell accused of killing five Iraqi nationals on separate occasions and in different parts of the province.

“During the operation, the Special Task Force seized a weapons depot containing various quantities of explosives, including suicide vests, explosive devices, sniper rifles, light machine guns, and mortar shells, in addition to explosive materials and a workshop dedicated to manufacturing and detonating explosives,” the statement added.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) in late June reported that unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle had killed an Iraqi man, who was the imam of a local mosque, in Idlib's Kafatayn village.

ISIS took control of swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in 2014, announcing its self-proclaimed caliphate with the Iraqi city of Mosul as its capital. They were territorially defeated with assistance from the US-led coalition forces in Iraq by 2017 and in Syria by 2019.