Rasmiya Awad, 65, was detained in a raid near Azaz, the official said, referring to a Turkish-controlled Syrian town near the border. When captured, she was also accompanied by five children.

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"We hope to gather a trove of intelligence from Baghdadi's sister on the inner workings of ISIS," the official said.

Little independent information is available on Baghdadi's sister and Reuters was not immediately able to verify if the captured individual was her.

Baghdadi killed himself last month when cornered in a tunnel during a raid by US special forces in northwestern Syria. Islamic State, in an audio tape posted online on Thursday, confirmed that its leader had died and vowed revenge against the United States.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's communications director said the woman's capture was evidence of Turkey's determination to fight against Islamic State.

"The arrest of al-Baghdadi's sister is yet another example of the success of our counter-terrorism operations," Fahrettin Altun wrote on Twitter early on Tuesday.

"Much dark propaganda against Turkey has been circulating to raise doubts about our resolve against Daesh," he wrote, using another name for Islamic State.

"Our strong counter-terrorism cooperation with like-minded partners can never be questioned."

Baghdadi had risen from obscurity to lead the ultra-hardline group and declare himself "caliph" of all Muslims, holding sway over huge areas of Iraq and Syria from 2014-2017 before Islamic State's control was wrested away by US-led coalition forces including Iraqis and Syrian Kurds.

The group, also known as ISIS, said a successor to Baghdadi identified as Abu Ibrahim Hashimi al-Quraishi had been appointed. A senior US official last week said Washington was looking at the new leader to determine where he came from.

World leaders welcomed his death, but they and security experts warned that the group, which carried out atrocities against religious minorities and horrified most Muslims, remained a security threat in Syria and beyond.

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US President Donald Trump on Sunday announced that Baghdadi killed himself during an overnight raid by elite US special operations forces in Syria.

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"Killing the leader was a very big, symbolic victory. I think it was very big for America, big for the world, big for the region. But at the end of the day we still have more work to do," Kushner, who is Trump's son-in-law, told Channel 13 News.

World leaders and security experts have warned that Islamic State, which carried out atrocities against religious minorities and horrified most Muslims, remained a security threat in Syria and beyond even after their leader's death.

Baghdadi died alongside three of his children by detonating an explosives-laden vest when he fled US forces into a dead-end tunnel during the attack in northwest Syria, Trump said.

Kushner, who has been spearheading the Trump administration's plan to end the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, met on Monday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and with his centrist election rival Benny Gantz.

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An official with the Kurdish-led internal security agency said on Monday the forces were "on high alert" in anticipation of possible riots or attacks on the guards in the prisons and displaced peoples' camps in northeastern Syria.

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Another Syrian Kurdish official insisted that despite the Turkish invasion, their fighters are still able to secure the prisons with ISIS operatives.

One of the camps is home to 70,000 people, mostly ISIS family members. In addition, over 10,000 prisoners, including 2,000 foreigners, are held in detention facilities.

There was already fear of chaos over the fate of those detained in the wake of the Turkish invasion of northeastern Syria, which ushered in major troop changes in the area. Turkey moved in troops in areas along the border while Syrian border guards are deploying in others.

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The video of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to whom the suicide bombers in last week's attack apparently pledged their loyalty, came as the top official in the Catholic Church urged Sri Lanka to crack down on Islamic extremists "as if on war footing."

Despite numerous claims about his death in the past few years, al-Baghdadi's whereabouts remain a mystery. Many of his top aides have been killed, mostly by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes. He is among the few senior ISIS commanders still at large after two years of steady battlefield losses that saw the self-styled "caliphate" shrink from an area the size of Britain to a tiny speck in the Euphrates River valley.

The video released by a media outlet run by the extremists, Al-Furqan, shows al-Baghdadi with a bushy gray and red beard, wearing a black robe with a beige vest and seated on the floor with what appears to be an AK-74 rifle propped up next to him. He is speaking with three men seated opposite him whose faces were covered and blotted out.

The 18-minute video of al-Baghdadi included images of the extremist leader sitting in a white room with three others, assault rifles by their sides. He discussed Sri Lanka in an audio portion of the video, suggesting the April 21 attacks came after they filmed him.

Al-Baghdadi praised the attackers, saying they conducted the bombings as revenge for the fall of Baghouz, Syria, the last territory the extremist group held there or in Iraq.

"As for your brothers in Sri Lanka, they have put joy in the hearts of the monotheists with their immersing operations that struck the homes of the crusaders in their Easter," al-Baghdadi said, according to a transcript from the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group.

He also called on Islamic State-pledged militants in the island nation off the southern tip of India to be "a thorn in the chests of the crusaders."

Authorities initially blamed the Easter attacks, targeting three hotels and three churches, on a local militant named Mohammed Zahran and his followers. Then the Islamic State group on April 23 released images of Zahran and others pledging their loyalty to al-Baghdadi.

Police conducted a later raid in eastern Sri Lanka that saw militants detonate suicide bombs in violence that killed at least 15 people, including six children. Explosives recovered by authorities bore hallmarks of the Islamic State group as well.

Anger against Sri Lanka's government has grown after the country discovered its security services had prior, specific warnings an attack loomed.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the archbishop of Colombo and the Catholic Church's top official on the island, said the church may not be able to stop people from taking the law into their own hands if the government doesn't do more.

"All the security forces should be involved and function as if on war footing," Ranjith told reporters.

"I want to state that we may not be able to keep people under control in the absence of a stronger security program," he said. "We can't forever give them false promises and keep them calm."

Ranjith, however, sought to assure Muslims the church will not allow any revenge attacks against them.

Catholic churches canceled Mass on Sunday, a week after the bombings, for fear of another attack. Catholics celebrated Mass in their homes while watching Ranjith preside over a televised service. Other denominations also closed their doors.

The church closing followed local officials and the U.S. Embassy in Colombo warning that more militants remained on the loose with explosives and places of worship remained targets.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena also appointed former army commander Shantha Kottegoda on Monday as the top official in the Defense Ministry. He earlier requested the resignation of his predecessor, Hemasiri Fernando, for intelligence failures that led to the bombings.

In the eastern Sri Lankan city of Kalmunai, Associated Press journalists saw police and soldiers conducting raids in a predominantly Muslim area. Such operations are likely to continue around the area Zahran once preached his extremist message glorifying killing non-Muslims.

Meanwhile, Sirisena's ban on wearing the niqab face veil took effect. The niqab is a black veil made of thin fabric, often with a small opening from which a woman's eyes can peer out.

While previously unseen in Sri Lanka, the niqab has grown in popularity in the last 10 years after the country's civil war.

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