BAGHDAD, May 4 (Xinhua) -- The Iraqi forces thwarted a major plan for the Islamic State (IS) militants to regroup in the country, while killing a prominent IS leader in northern Iraq, an Iraqi official newspaper reported on Saturday.
An Iraqi intelligence team, named al-Suqoor Cell, thwarted IS plot which tried to form new terrorist groups in Iraq and managed to kill a number of IS militants who infiltrated from neighboring Syria, the state-run al-Sabah newspaper said.
"The operation came after several months of tracking Daesh (IS group) militants by the intelligence team and their sources as part of their efforts to eliminate the infiltrated Daesh militants from Syria," the newspaper quoted the Iraqi Interior Ministry's Chief of Intelligence Abu Ali al-Basri as saying.
The intelligence team also killed Abdul Ghafour Abdullah Karmoush, also known as Wahid Amniyah, who is a leader of the terrorist group in northern Iraq, and is responsible for killing dozens of innocent people in Mosul and Tal Afar areas in the northern province of Nineveh, al-Basri said.
He said that Karmoush was killed in an ambush by security forces in north of the town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, and one of his aids blew himself up during the battle.
The Iraqi intelligence will reveal more details about the operation of dismantling the IS regrouping later, according to al-Basri.
The security situation in Iraq has been dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces declared full liberation of Iraq from IS militants late in 2017, and the Iraqi forces tried to seize the whole border areas with Syria and nearby desert in western Iraq.
However, small groups or individuals of Islamic State (IS) militants repeatedly tried to infiltrate into Iraq from neighboring Syria through the roughly 600 km long border with Iraq with vast rugged areas and desert land in an attempt to regroup in Iraq again.
