US strike killed senior ISIS leader who planned Europe attacks, says military
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Some 900 US troops remain in Syria as part of a US-led coalition battling remnants of ISIS, who remain active in the country.
PHOTO: AFP
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BEIRUT - The United States military said on Tuesday that it had carried out a strike in Syria killing a senior Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group official responsible for planning attacks in Europe.
The strike in north-western Syria on Monday killed senior ISIS leader Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, the US Central Command (Centcom) said.
It said he was “responsible for planning (ISIS) attacks into Europe”. The statement did not specify the location of the strike and added that “no civilians were killed or injured”.
“Though degraded”, the militant group, which was ousted from its last territory in Syria in 2019, “remains able to conduct operations within the region with a desire to strike beyond the Middle East,” said Centcom chief Michael Kurilla.
Jabouri also “developed the leadership structure for ISIS”, and his death will “temporarily disrupt the organisation’s ability to plot external attacks”, Centcom said.
ISIS has claimed a number of deadly attacks in Europe in recent years, including a November 2015 attack in Paris French city of Nice in July 2016
The same year, three suicide attacks in Belgium
Drone strike
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the more than decade-old conflict in Syria, said Jabouri was killed in a US drone strike in the Idlib region in the north-west, an area run by Islamists.
It said he was killed while speaking on the telephone as he walked in the open near where he was staying.
The observatory said that Jabouri, who was posing as a Syrian, had sought refuge in the area some 10 days ago.
The Centcom chief said that ISIS, despite no longer controlling any territory in either Syria or Iraq, “continues to represent a threat to the region and beyond”.
“Centcom remains committed to the enduring defeat” of ISIS, General Kurilla said.
Some 900 US troops remain in Syria, most in the Kurdish-administered north-east, as part of a US-led coalition battling remnants of ISIS, who remain active in both Syria and neighbouring Iraq, operating out of hideouts in desert and mountain areas.
In October 2019, Washington announced it had killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
His two successors have also been killed: the first during a US operation in north-western Syria, and the second in an operation by former Syrian rebels in the country’s south.
In February this year, a US helicopter raid killed ISIS commander Hamza al-Homsi, who oversaw the militants’ operations in north-eastern Syria. Four US military personnel were wounded in the operation.
Inside Syria, ISIS has carried out a spate of deadly attacks in 2023, many of them opportunistic.
Impoverished Syrians foraging for desert truffles to sell have been a particular target for the militants while the delicacy has been in season in recent months, with dozens killed in ambushes. AFP
