Syria Kurds expect IS revenge attacks after Baghdadi death

Syria's Kurdish forces said they expected revenge attacks by the Islamic State group following the US announcement Sunday that the jihadist organisation's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed.

"Sleeper cells will seek revenge for Baghdadi's death," Mazloum Abdi, the top commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces -- the de facto army of the Kurdish administration that holds thousands of IS fighters in custody -- told AFP.

"This is why anything is possible, including attacks on prisons," he said.

The SDF, who were the US-led coalition's main partner on the ground in Syria during years of operations against IS, hold an estimated 12,000 IS suspects in a number of different facilities in northeastern Syria.

An SDF-led operation eliminated the last scrap of IS's self-proclaimed "caliphate" -- which once covered vast territory in Syria and Iraq -- in March.

The territorial defeat of the jihadist group did not however mean the death of the organisation or of its ideology.

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