ISIS’ Suicide Squads Chief Installed near Israeli border, Claims First Victim
Abu Hammam al Jazrawi, the Islamic State’s suicides squad commander and his lieutenants arrived last week at the Yarmoouk basin which covers the Jordanian-Israeli borders in southeastern Syria.
(See attached map).
Waiting ready for his command was the Jaiish Khalid bin al-Walid Army, a militia named for a prominent Muslim Arab general who defeated the Byzantines in the Battle of Yarmouk in the year 636.
DEBKA Weekly’s counterterrorism sources note that ISIS has never before deployed a senior officer so close to the borders of Jordan and Israel.
Al Jazrawi, who is believed to be of Saudi origin, got his assignment when the officers, staffs and units were allotted their future posts under the Islamic State’s organized planning for orderly retreats from former strongholds (as DEBKA Weekly has often observed). Each senior officer was given a new operational sector and found a unit waiting for his command consisting of members of the Islamic State or affiliates.
One of those reassigned officers turned up in the Egyptian Sinai peninsula some weeks ago, smuggled in from Mosul through Jordan, along with a group of ISIS officers.
Jazrawi’s staff officers reached Yarmouk from Mosul some weeks ago, trickling through Anbar in western Iraq as loners or in groups of two or three. They were handed from tribe to tribe against cash payments until they reached southeastern Syria.
This jihadist officer’s expertise lies in the deployment of large numbers of suicide bombers for simultaneous assaults, a tactic he employed with devastating success in the battle for Mosul against the incoming Iraqi, Kurdish and US special operations forces. Their advance was slowed and their casualties horrific. Iraq’s SOF Golden Division, which spearheaded the successful assault on Mosul, sustained losses of up to 40-50 percent of its manpower.
On arrival in Syria, Jazrawi joined forces with comrades from the Mosul front and established the same sort of command center, labeled Office No. 7, at a village called al-Shagara.
He then took charge of his 2,000 troops.
His arrival sent alarms flashing through American, Israeli and Jordanian counterterrorism offices. No sooner was the ISIS commander in place, than the trouble started. Intelligence watchers sighted preparations for the expansion of the territory under his control by taking large bites out of Syrian rebel turf in the Quneitra region of the Syrian Golan.
Then, on Tuesday, Oct 10, a Khalid bin Al-Walid marksman shot and injured an American visiting an IDF facility in the southern Golan. The Israeli army spokesman said the incident was being investigated and described the American as a “medic.” However, ISIS scouts most likely identified him as an American officer and decided to target him, sending a strong signal that the relative calm prevailing on the Golan region for some time won’t hold up much longer.
