4 ISIL militants arrested in Iraq’s Kurdish region

Iraqi security sources have arrested several members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the country's Kurdistan Region, media reports said. “Four members of the ISIL have been arrested in the Soleymanieh region of Iraq’s Kurdistan region while they were trying to explode the building of Soleymanieh security office, Arabic-language Al-Hayat newspaper quoted an informed source as saying. The source did not provide any further details about the four arrested terrorists or the way the have been apprehended. Iraq’s Soleymanieh was the scene of three separate terrorist attacks in December, but Al-Qaeda’s emir and his brother were arrested by security forces. The ISIL militants' first choice for sneaking into the country is through the Syrian border, but if they can't, they would try their second choice, the Kurdish region. The ISIL is an Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group comprised of foreign and Arab terrorists. The group has mainly been operating in Syria for the last two years. Later in December, a Salafi Sheikh disclosed that the ISIL has recruited many former intelligence officers of Iraq. “Abu Iman Al-Araqi, ISIL commander in Lattakia, is a former Iraqi intelligence officer” working under Saddam Hussein's Baath party, Syrian Salafi Sheikh Adnan Al-Arour said in a televised interview. Al-Arour said that Al-Araqi prepared the Al-Qaeda operatives who came from Saudi Arabia for suicide attacks.