South Front
U.S. Marines with Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment provide security support during mission on Sept. 9, 2018, at an undisclosed location in Syria. (Cpl. Gabino Perez/Marine Corps)
The United States-led coalition and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) seized a large sum of money and loads of gold during a recent joint raid in the northeastern Syrian governorate of Raqqa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on April 22.
The London-based monitoring group said that the raid took place “a few days ago” in the town of Kasrat Faraj in the southern Raqqa countryside.
The raid targeted a farm that was, according to the group, the main residence of ISIS founder and leader Abu Baker al-Baghdadi several years ago. Inside three well-hidden rooms in the farm, U.S. and SDF forces found large quantities of gold, around $1 million in cash as well as weapons.
Al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. special forces in another hideout located in the northwestern Syrian region of Greater Idlib in 2019.
“The money and weapons were transferred to a joint warehouse of U.S. forces and the SDF,” the SOHR’s report reads.
According to the monitoring group, ISIS cells in Raqqa were using the farm as a base to plan and launch attacks against the SDF.
The U.S.-led coalition and the SDF have not commented on the SOHR’s report, yet. Such operations are not always announced.
In the last few months, the U.S. stepped up operations against ISIS remnants in Syria in what appears to be an attempt to justify its presence in the war-torn country for the long term.
The U.S. Central Command announced earlier this week that its forces had killed a senior leader of ISIS during a unilateral helicopter raid in the Turkish-occupied village of al-Swaidah in the northern Aleppo countryside. The slain terrorist was identified as Abd-al-Hadi Mahmud al-Haji Ali, an operational planner responsible for planning terror attacks in the Middle East and Europe.
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