BAGHDAD, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- Iraq said on Saturday its security forces received 50 Iraqi prisoners of the Islamic State (IS) militants captured earlier in Syria.
The handover of the prisoners was carried out through Rabia border crossing in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh under the coordination of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) and the Syrian side, the media office of the JOC said in a statement.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry's Agency of Intelligence and Federal Investigation received the prisoners to take legal actions against them, the statement said.
Iraq had already received from the Syrian side several batches of Iraqi nationals associated with the IS group who were arrested in Syria.
In 2014, the IS militants established a self-proclaimed caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, but thousands of IS loyalists were killed or captured after the defeat of the group in Iraq in 2017 and later in Syria. ■
