The US Military on Tuesday revealed that a senior Commander of the Islamic State responsible for carrying out attacks in Europe has been killed in a drone strike carried out by an American-led coalition.
Table of Contents
Man killed identified as Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri
The coalition strike killed the man on Monday. The US Military in an official statement on Tuesday revealed that he has been identified as a senior IS Commander Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, who was in charge of planning the attacks on Europe. The statement further added that the militant group’s ability to plan external operations would be temporarily affected by the killing of its senior member.
The drone strike carried out in Beirut, Northwestern Syria on Monday, was the largest yet by the American-led coalition. The strike was conducted to kill a top-level official of the militant group, which once controlled parts of Syria and Iraq, the statement said. With decreasing power over these parts, the group has lost most of the land it once controlled. The outfit’s external plots have also fallen in recent times. Earlier, it had planned and executed a series of attacks raging over the European continent, leading to a large number of casualties. It has still been conducting frequent attacks on Syria and Iraq.
Commander Khalid impersonated a displaced person
It was alleged by some opposition activists that the man killed, arrived in the area about 10 days and claimed that he was uprooted from the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, nearing Iraq’s borders. The Al-Jabouri, one of the most widespread tribes in Iraq, also has a presence in parts of Syria. The commander allegedly impersonated a Deir el-Zour native to justify the Iraqi Arabic dialect that he spoke in, as people in the Deir el-Zour area also speak in a similar Arabic dialect.
The Iraqi citizen was killed in Kefteen village
It was revealed in the drone strike conducted on Monday, that only one person was killed near the rebel-held village of Kefteen. A Britain-based Human Rights Observatory said that the man killed was an Iraqi Citizen. The dead man was identified as an Iraqi citizen who was struck by a missile while talking on his cellular phone outside his rented home in the village.
The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also called the ‘White Helmets’, claimed that the body was found at the scene of the attack, and the man later succumbed to his injuries.
Why is America carrying out these strikes?
The drone strike on Monday was one operation in the long ongoing series of strikes carried out by US-led coalitions, targeting senior officials of terrorist outfits linked to the Al-Qaeda Militant group. Most of the attacks in the course of these strikes have targeted a branch outfit of the militant group Al-Qaeda of the Islamic State, Horas al-Din. The name roughly translates to ‘Protectors of the Religion’ and has members mostly from the Al-Qaeda group.
In February, two people were shot down in another such strike. One of these people was alleged to be a senior officer of a terror outfit. Later, a human-rights observatory identified one of the men as a well-known leader of a militant offshoot of Al-Qaeda which was defeated four years ago.
Back in 2019, the founder and erstwhile leader of the outfit, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was hunted down by America in a raid carried out in the rebel Idlib province.
