Israel and 20 other countries have established a covert counterterrorism coalition to share intelligence on Islamic State fighters returning to Europe from Syria, German magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday.
Operation Gallant Phoenix is led by the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command based in Jordan.
Its goal is to gather intelligence, documents, DNA evidence and fingerprints from recently captured Islamic State enclaves in Syria. The information is then cross-examined with intelligence information obtained from other sources.
Aside from Israel, the United States and Germany, Der Spiegel did not name any other countries involved in the operation.
In early January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of ambassadors from NATO that Israeli intelligence had helped thwart a terrorist plot to crash airplanes into European cities.
"ISIS is being destroyed in Iraq and Syria, but it is trying to establish an alternative territorial base in the Sinai. Israel is contributing to preventing that in myriad ways," the prime minister said.
"We have, through our intelligence services, provided information that has stopped several dozen major terrorist attacks, many of them in European countries," Netanyahu said at the time.
In 2016, the Associated Press reported that ISIS had trained at least 400 fighters to target Europe in deadly waves of attacks.
