The US military has announced that several Islamic State leaders have been killed in Syria

US forces have killed several leaders of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in Syria during a helicopter operation and airstrikes, the US command said on Thursday (Oct 6).

The US military’s Middle East Command (CENTCOM) wrote that the helicopter operation was carried out overnight in northeastern Syria from Wednesday into Thursday. In the first release.

“Wednesday evening, US forces conducted a helicopter raid near Qamichli, targeting IS officer Rakhan Wahid al-Shamri, known to facilitate arms smuggling and clandestine transport of militants.”Centcom said. “The marked person was killed and one of his companions was injured. Two other accomplices were captured.”, Centcom added, without specifying the nationality of the deceased officer. According to the same source, no US soldiers or civilians were killed or injured in the operation.

Cooperating sources said the attack took place near the town of Qamichli, which is controlled by Kurdish forces allied with US troops, in an area held by Syrian regime forces.

Exchange of fire

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) said it was the first time US forces had carried out a helicopter operation in an area under the regime of Bashar al-Assad since the war in Syria began in 2011. Hundreds of US troops are stationed in northeastern Syria as part of a Washington-led anti-jihadist coalition that continues to fight alongside Kurdish allies in IS’s sleeper cell, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

In Damascus, Syrian state television announced a helicopter operation “US Occupation Forces” One of them died. She did not give further details.

“Three US helicopters carrying troops have landed” near the village of Moulouq Sarre, a local resident described to Agence France-Presse (AFP). US Army “They called on people to stay at home through loudspeakers.”, before looking for a home. They are there “He killed one and kidnapped two”He added on condition of anonymity.

According to him, the killed person was a migrant from the Syrian province of Hassakeh, little known to the citizens and called himself Abu Hayal. The villager said a firefight pitted American soldiers against a Syrian regime proxy force. The OSDH reported on its page that two people were captured, an Iraqi and a Syrian.

No civilians were harmed

The US command then said, In the second statement, killing two other leaders of the jihadist group in an airstrike in northern Syria. This second attack, according to Centcom, would have made the kill possible “Both Abu-Hash and al-Umawi (…) and another senior ISIS officer”without affecting the public. “This strike will destabilize the region and weaken IS’s ability to attack our forces and our partners.”General Michael Guerrilla, head of the US command in the region, commented.

After a stellar rise to power and sweeping swaths of territory in Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014, IS has seen its self-proclaimed “caliphate” crumble under the brunt of a series of attacks. He was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019. But the Sunni militant group responsible for many of the abuses continues to carry out attacks through sleeper cells in both countries.

The US continues to target IS leaders. In July, they announced that a drone strike in northwest Syria had killed a senior IS official. In June, an IS leader was captured in a helicopter operation in northern Syria, they said.

IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US strike in 2019. and his successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hachimi al-Qurachi, deposed in February 2022 A US special forces operation in northwest Syria, a region controlled by jihadists.

The complex war in Syria, a fragmented country with different protagonists intervening, has claimed around 500,000 lives since 2011.