BERLIN -- Germany's federal criminal police said Thursday that it is in possession of files containing personal data on members of the Islamic State extremist group and believe them to be authentic.
The announcement came after the United Kingdom's Sky News reported it had obtained 22,000 Islamic State files on the border with Turkey and Syria, files that detail the militants' real names, where they were from, telephone numbers and even names of those who sponsored and recruited the militants.
Though the significance of these files is yet to be gauged, they could be the largest-yet treasure trove of documents found on the Islamic State and the most significant leak on its past and present fighters and operations across the Mideast.
They also could shape the campaign against the extremist group, which emerged from al-Qaida in Iraq. The cache, exposing its members and their families, could undermine its future ability to recruit and inspire would-be members.
Army Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State, said the information could help the coalition fight the Islamic State by aiding in a crackdown on the group's foreign-fighter networks.
He said that while he was not able to verify the documents, he hoped that "if there is a media outlet that has these names and numbers, I hope they publish them." This would help bring attention to the problem of foreign fighters joining the Islamic State group, and would help law enforcement agencies crack down on the problem, he said.
"This would allow the law enforcement apparatus across the world to become much more engaged and begin to help do what we can to stem this flow of foreign fighters -- so we're hopeful that it's accurate and if so we certainly plan to do everything we can to help," he said.
Sky said the files were passed on to it on a memory stick stolen from the head of the Islamic State's internal security police by a former fighter who had grown disillusioned with the group.
Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported it had also obtained "dozens" of similar files on the Turkey-Syria border, where it said Islamic State files and videos were widely available from anti-Islamic State Kurdish fighters and also members of the Islamic State group itself.
Both Sky and the Sueddeutsche reported that the documents were forms with 23 questions filled out by recruits when they were inducted into the Islamic State. Sky said they included citizens from at least 51 countries.
Markus Koths, a spokesman for Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office, the Bundeskriminalamt, said it had Islamic State personnel file documents such as those obtained by the Sueddeutsche. He would not comment on specifics about either the Sky or Sueddeutsche reports, citing an ongoing investigation, and also would not say how German intelligence obtained the documents or how long they have been in its possession, "for tactical reasons."
He did say, however, "we believe there is a high probability that these documents are genuine."
"These documents are of significance for us for prosecutorial reasons and for threat prevention," he said.
Similar documents, which have not yet been independently verified, were posted by Zaman al-Wasl, a pro-Syrian opposition website.
The documents that Zaman al-Wasl published had the word "secret" at the bottom while on the top it had the name Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant on one corner and the General Directorate of Borders on the left corner on top.
The documents posted by the website stated that the fighters entered areas under Islamic State control in 2013, except for one of a Turkish citizen born in 1989 who entered on May 12, 2014.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, commonly referred to as ISIL, was the official name of the group before militant leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the Islamic State caliphate in June 2014 after the group captured wide areas of Iraq, including the northern city of Mosul, the country's second-largest.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant was formed in 2013 when al-Qaida's branches in Iraq and Syria known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Nusra Front briefly merged. After they split in early 2013, those under al-Baghdadi's command kept using the name ISIL until the caliphate was declared.
The date of the documents suggest they may not provide information on the Islamic State's current membership, but will offer insight into fighters recruited in 2013 as well as the group's bureaucratic systems.
Germany's Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told the dpa news agency that the material would give authorities a better chance to track down and prosecute people who had fought with the Islamic State.
There are no clear estimates of how many Islamic State fighters there are in Iraq and Syria, but the numbers range between 30,000 and 100,000. A CIA assessment in late 2014 put the number of fighters around 31,500.
Separately, Pentagon officials said the U.S. has "disrupted and degraded" the Islamic State's ability to produce chemical weapons after launching multiple airstrikes in Iraq based on information provided by a militant leader who was captured last month.
"We feel good about the damage we've done to the program," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said. He declined to say which elements of the militants' chemical-weapons program were struck or how severely they were damaged. "I'm not going to say we knocked it out in full, but we feel confident that we made a difference."
Cook said Sulayman Dawud al-Bakkar, whom he described as the Islamic State's "emir of chemical and traditional weapons," gave up important information about the chemical-weapons program during interrogations after being captured in February and turned over to the Iraqi government. Cook declined to say more about the capture, but other defense officials have said al-Bakkar, also known as Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, was captured by U.S. special forces in northern Iraq.
In its daily tally of airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, the U.S.-led coalition reported Sunday that it conducted two airstrikes Saturday near Mosul against an Islamic State "weapons production facility," but it did not specify that this was a chemical-weapons facility. Cook declined to specify which airstrikes were carried out on the basis of al-Bakkar's information, saying to do so could compromise future military action against the Islamic State.
Cook declined to offer details about the size, scope or components of the Islamic State's chemical-weapons effort.
Information for this article was contributed by Zeina Karam, Bassem Mroue, Susannah George, Kirsten Grieshaber and Robert Burns of The Associated Press.
A Section on 03/11/2016