ISIS senior leader killed in Syria: CENTCOM

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United States Central Command on Monday announced the killing of an Islamic State (ISIS) senior leader in Syria, saying the militant was responsible for orchestrating ISIS attacks into Europe.

The ISIS official, identified as Khalid ‘Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, was killed as a result of a unilateral attack from the US forces, according to the statement from CENTCOM. The location of where the operation was carried out was not specified.

Jabouri’s death “will temporarily disrupt the [ISIS] organization’s ability to plot external attacks,” the statement added.

After their territorial defeat in March 2019 to a military operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and backed by a US-led global coalition, ISIS militants have carried out hit-and-run attacks on civilians and military targets of both the Syrian regime and the Kurdish-led authority in the northwest of the country.

An American drone strike in July killed Maher al-Agal, leader of ISIS in Syria, in the country’s northwest, five months after a secret US operation took down the terror group’s top leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi again in northwest Syria’s Idlib, a region largely controlled by rebel groups backed by Turkey.

Longtime ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a similar US forces raid in another area of Idlib in 2019. Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest after being cornered in a tunnel with three children.

In its propaganda magazine on Thursday, ISIS claimed to have conducted 2 attacks in Syria from March 23 to March 29, killing and injuring 6 people.