US army announces the killing of an ISIS leader responsible for terrorism in Europe
The US military said on Tuesday that it carried out a strike in Syria that resulted in the killing of a senior ISIS leader responsible for planning attacks in Europe. The US Central Command said the strike, which was carried out in northwestern Syria on Monday, killed prominent ISIS leader Khalid Eid Ahmad al-Jaburi
The statement did not specify the location of the strike but said that no civilians were killed or injured in the strike.
Disrupting Organization Capabilities
Gen. Michael Corrilla, head of U.S. Central Command, said the jihadist group, which was ousted from its last territory in Syria in 2019, “despite its destruction, ISIS is still able to conduct operations inside the region with the desire to strike outside the Middle East,” U.S. news site Al-Monitor reported.
U.S. Central Command said al-Juburi “developed ISIS’s leadership structure, and his death will temporarily disrupt the group’s ability to plan external attacks.”
ISIS has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly attacks in Europe in recent years, including a November 2015 attack in and around Paris that killed 130 people and another in the French city of Nice in July 2016 that killed 86 people.
That same year, three suicide attacks in Belgium killed more than 30 people. In August 2017, attacks claimed by IS in Barcelona and elsewhere in Spain killed 16 people.
Threats from ISIS
The U.S. website reported that ISIS lost its last territory following a military offensive backed by the U.S.-led coalition in March 2019, and since then most of the group’s remnants in Syria have retreated to desert caches.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British monitor of Syria’s more than a decade-long conflict, said al-iby militants.
He said he was killed while speaking by phone while walking in the open near where he was staying.
According to the Observatory, al-Juburi, who was disguised as a Syrian, had taken refuge in the area about 10 days earlier.
The head of U.S. Central Command said ISIS, while no longer controlling any territory in Syria or Iraq, remains a threat to the region and beyond.
“Central Command remains committed to the enduring defeat” of ISIS, Corrilla said, noting that nearly 900 U.S. troops remain in Syria, most in the Kurdish-administered northeast, as part of a U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS remnants, who remain active in both Syria and neighboring Iraq, and operate from hideouts in the desert and mountainous areas.
In February this year, a U.S. helicopter strike killed ISIS commander Hamza al-Homsi, who oversaw jihadist operations in northeastern Syria, and wounded four U.S. military personnel in the operation.
