ARA News 

ERBIL – The Islamic State (ISIS) extremist group transferred on Wednesday dozens of prisoners from Iraq’s Mosul to the city of Raqqa in northeastern Syria.

ISIS militants have evacuated the central prison of Mosul and moved prisoners to Raqqa–the group’s de facto capital in Syria.

“Five vehicles carrying more than 40 prisoners were seen on Wednesday evening crossing into the Syrian territory, heading to Raqqa,” media activist Abdullah al-Malla told ARA News in Mosul. “Most of the prisoners relocated to Raqqa are former Iraqi officers who have been detained by the group after storming Mosul in the summer of 2014.” 

The informed source reported that ISIS has summarily executed dozens of other prisoners in the yard of Mosul central prison, before relocating the rest to Syria’s Raqqa. 

“ISIS leadership and allied Sharia officials have decided to only keep prisoners whose cases could be negotiated with their families and clans to release them for ransoms,” al-Malla reported, quoting an ISIS security source in Mosul as saying.

Dead bodies of prisoners executed at the hands of ISIS jihadis “were thrown in the Tigris River in northeastern Mosul on Wednesday midnight”, according to the source.

Mosul has been witnessing a state of alert in the ranks of ISIS for weeks, as the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Iraqi army troops made new gains in the vicinity of the stranded city in a military campaign aimed at retaking Mosul –ISIS main bastion in Iraq’s northwestern Nineveh province. 

Reporting by: Sarbaz Yousef

Source: ARA News