This week the Iraqi Security Forces launched a major anti-terror operation in the city of Mosul, located in northern Iraq. The operation was largely successful with the ISF capturing a total of 22 Islamic State militants. They also recovered large caches of explosives used to construct improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Since the collapse of the ISIS caliphate, there has been an increasing number of attacks and ambushes carried out against Kurdish and Iraqi security forces as well as pro-government paramilitary units and militias.

The Iraqi military released the statement that,

Nineveh Operations Command Forces arrested 22 criminals during an inspection in the village of Badush, northwest of Mosul. All of them were wanted by the Iraqi judiciary.”

The statement also confirmed that Iraqi military forces also destroyed an abandoned tunnel network as well as ten explosive charges that were presumed to be used as countermeasures — though the explosives had not yet been emplaced. The raiding forces also recovered large stores of small arms ammunition and 155mm artillery shells. The statement did not clarify exactly which unit was responsible for executing the raid but it can be speculated that Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) were the driving element behind the operation — given its high-risk nature.