ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraqi security forces captured six “wanted” individuals in west Mosul on Sunday, according to statement from the interior ministry. A Facebook post from the Security Media Center confirmed those captured were members of ISIS.

“A force of the Nineveh Operations Command managed to arrest six wanted [individuals] in a sweep up operation of the railway tracks and train station area on the left side of Mosul,” Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasoul, spokesperson for the Security Media Center, said on Sunday, according to Iraq’s Ministry of Interior.

A tunnel was also discovered, said Rasoul.

“The al-Hadbah office of crime fighting of the Nineveh police’s crime fighting directorate, based on intelligence information, arrested six members of the Daesh [ISIS] terrorist gang against whom there were arrest warrants based on Article 1/4 of those working as combatants in the ranks of criminal Daesh while in control of Mosul city,” the Security Media Center said in a Facebook post on Sunday.

Mosul was liberated from ISIS in July 2017, after the group seized control of Iraq’s second biggest city in the summer of 2014. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced the defeat of ISIS in Iraq in December last year.

However, ISIS still has sleeper cells in many pockets in Iraq, especially in the demarcation line between Peshmerga forces and Iraqi security forces such as Kirkuk, Diyala, Saladin, and the Hamrin Mountains.

Mosul’s Hamam al-Alil, a town south of the city, is a hotbed for ISIS militants, with daily sweep up operations by Iraqi forces.

Rudaw