US-backed forces said Friday they had captured a leader of ISIS in eastern Syria where the Kurdish-led fighters have been battling the militants.
A statement by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) identified the suspect as Osama Oweid Saleh and described him as "one of the most dangerous terrorists" of ISIS.
But Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, disputed the claim.
Mr Abdel Rahman said Saleh was merely "a former local security official" in the eastern Deir Ezzor province.
In its statement the SDF said that Saleh "was a security official for the terrorists [ISIS] in Deir Ezzor and took an active part in planning and implementing more than 40 terrorist operations" for the extremist group.
It also said that he was "a security official" in other parts of Syria for ISIS, including in the former militant bastion of Raqqa.
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Saleh, it said, was ambushed by SDF fighters and captured on November 22 in the Deir Ezzor countryside.
Mr Abdel Rahman said that Saleh "could be a member of an ISIS sleeper cell".
The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, is seeking to expel ISIS from a pocket of land in the Deir Ezzor province near the Iraq border.
The Kurdish-led forces have spearheaded the US-backed fight against ISIS in Syria.
On Monday the Observatory reported that the SDF suffered record fatalities in an assault by ISIS as holdout militants kept up a fierce defence of their last Syrian redoubt.
It said a total of more than 200 people have been killed since around 500 ISIS fighters burst out of the fog shrouding the area in eastern Syria near the border with Iraq to launch their deadly assault last Friday.
Ninety-two of the dead were SDF fighters while at least 61 extremists and 51 civilians, mostly their relatives, also died in the violence, it said.
Paatal Lok season two
Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy
Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong
Rating: 4.5/5
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
Iran's dirty tricks to dodge sanctions
There’s increased scrutiny on the tricks being used to keep commodities flowing to and from blacklisted countries. Here’s a description of how some work.
1 Going Dark
A common method to transport Iranian oil with stealth is to turn off the Automatic Identification System, an electronic device that pinpoints a ship’s location. Known as going dark, a vessel flicks the switch before berthing and typically reappears days later, masking the location of its load or discharge port.
2. Ship-to-Ship Transfers
A first vessel will take its clandestine cargo away from the country in question before transferring it to a waiting ship, all of this happening out of sight. The vessels will then sail in different directions. For about a third of Iranian exports, more than one tanker typically handles a load before it’s delivered to its final destination, analysts say.
3. Fake Destinations
Signaling the wrong destination to load or unload is another technique. Ships that intend to take cargo from Iran may indicate their loading ports in sanction-free places like Iraq. Ships can keep changing their destinations and end up not berthing at any of them.
4. Rebranded Barrels
Iranian barrels can also be rebranded as oil from a nation free from sanctions such as Iraq. The countries share fields along their border and the crude has similar characteristics. Oil from these deposits can be trucked out to another port and documents forged to hide Iran as the origin.
* Bloomberg
War
Director: Siddharth Anand
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff, Ashutosh Rana, Vaani Kapoor
Rating: Two out of five stars
India squad for fourth and fifth Tests
Kohli (c), Dhawan, Rahul, Shaw, Pujara, Rahane (vc), Karun, Karthik (wk), Pant (wk), Ashwin, Jadeja, Pandya, Ishant, Shami, Umesh, Bumrah, Thakur, Vihari
The 100 Best Novels in Translation
Boyd Tonkin, Galileo Press
NYBL PROFILE
Company name: Nybl
Date started: November 2018
Founder: Noor Alnahhas, Michael LeTan, Hafsa Yazdni, Sufyaan Abdul Haseeb, Waleed Rifaat, Mohammed Shono
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Software Technology / Artificial Intelligence
Initial investment: $500,000
Funding round: Series B (raising $5m)
Partners/Incubators: Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 4, Dubai Future Accelerators Cohort 6, AI Venture Labs Cohort 1, Microsoft Scale-up
Omar Yabroudi's factfile
Born: October 20, 1989, Sharjah
Education: Bachelor of Science and Football, Liverpool John Moores University
2010: Accrington Stanley FC, internship
2010-2012: Crystal Palace, performance analyst with U-18 academy
2012-2015: Barnet FC, first-team performance analyst/head of recruitment
2015-2017: Nottingham Forest, head of recruitment
2018-present: Crystal Palace, player recruitment manager
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