A top UK general who was part of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State terrorists in the Middle East today said that a large amount of intelligence had been obtained on the dreaded terror group’s plans to target Europe.
Major-General Rupert Jones, the deputy commander of US-led operations against the militants, said the files had been retrieved in July by Western-backed Kurdish and Arab militias from the former Islamic State (ISIS) stronghold of Manbij, in the Aleppo governorate of northern Syria.
Jones told some British newspapers that an even bigger haul of data about ISIS was expected to be uncovered in the terrorists’ stronghold of Mosul,, which he predicted would fall by the early half of next year.
“Manbij was hugely important for external operations. A huge amount of intelligence gathered in Manbij related to threats in Europe and elsewhere,” he said.
“I am absolutely certain that an extraordinary amount of intelligence will come out of Mosul. We have ramped up as a coalition our ability to gather and process all that intelligence, because it will be a labyrinth of intelligence,” he said.