The US will hand over to Iraqi authorities nearly 50 ISIS members who were transferred from Syria in recent days, two Iraqi intelligence officials said Thursday.
The officials said the ISIS members were expected to be handed over by Friday, revealed The Associated Press.
The move comes after Turkey began a military offensive into northern Syria against US-backed Kurdish-led fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces who are holding more than 10,000 ISIS members. Those include some 2,000 foreigners, including about 800 Europeans.
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that some of the "most dangerous" ISIS members had been moved, but he provided no details.
US officials said Wednesday that two British militants believed to be part of an ISIS group that beheaded hostages and was known as "The Beatles" have been moved out of a detention center in Syria and are in American custody.
There are concerns that with the assault unfolding in northeastern Syria, the Kurdish-led forces in charge of guarding the detainees will not be able to secure them or would divert forces to fend off against advancing Turkish forces.
Initially, Trump said before the assault began that Turkey would be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the area. It was not clear how that would be implemented.
The two men, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Amon Kotey, along with other British extremists, allegedly made up the ISIS cell nicknamed "The Beatles" by surviving captives because of their English accents.
In 2014 and 2015, the militants held more than 20 Western hostages in Syria and tortured many of them. The group beheaded seven American, British and Japanese journalists and aid workers and a group of Syrian soldiers.
Among the journalists they killed was American James Foley, who was first, followed by fellow Americans Steven Sotloff and Peter Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning and Japanese journalists Haruna Yukawa and Kenji Goto. The beheadings, often carried out on camera, horrified the world soon after ISIS took over much of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The two British men were captured in January last year in eastern Syria by the Kurdish forces amid the collapse of ISIS. Their detention set off a debate in the US and Europe over how to prosecute their citizens who joined ISIS.
ISIS was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in March the SDF captured the last sliver of land that was held by ISIS.
SDF has handed over hundreds of ISIS fighters to Iraqi authorities over the past two years, including Europeans while some were repatriated to their home countries.
Earlier this year, Iraq tried 12 French ISIS fighters whom the SDF handed over to Baghdad in January sentencing most of them to death.
France at the time said the Iraqi court has jurisdiction to rule in the cases, though a spokeswoman reiterated the French governments opposition to the death penalty.
Trump and other US officials have repeatedly pressed other nations across Europe and the Middle East to take back the detainees from their countries. But international leaders have been largely reluctant and have been slow to take any back.
