A drone strike carried out by the American-led coalition in northwestern Syria has killed a senior member of the Islamic State terrorist group who was responsible for planning attacks in Europe, the United States military said Tuesday April 4.
The military statement added that his death ‘will temporarily disrupt the organization’s ability to plot external attacks.’
No civilians were killed or injured in the strike, the military added.
The senior ISIS member’s death was expected to ‘temporarily disrupt the organization’s ability to plot external attacks,’ the military said.
‘ISIS continues to represent a threat to the region and beyond,’ CENTCOM chief General Michael Kurilla said in a statement.
‘Though degraded, the group remains able to conduct operations within the region with a desire to strike beyond the Middle East,’ he warned.
The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, said on Monday that a person had been killed by a ‘missile strike from an unidentified drone’ on the outskirts of the town of Killi, north of Idlib.
‘Our teams responded and took the injured person to Bab Al-Hawa Hospital, where he died,’ the White Helmets said in a tweet.
Monday’s strike was the latest by the U.S. military to kill a top official with the extremist group that once controlled large parts of Iraq and Syria, where it declared a ‘caliphate.’
From the areas they once controlled, the extremists planned deadly attacks in Europe that killed scores of people. In recent years, such attacks have decreased because the Islamic State group lost the last sliver of land it controlled in March 2019.
In February, a drone strike killed two local activists initially identified as Horas al-Din members, according to The Associated Press. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights later said one of them was a senior member of ISIS.
