US raid in Syria targets senior Daesh leader — Centcom

BEIRUT — A US helicopter raid on Monday targeted a senior Daesh terror group leader in Syria suspected of plotting attacks in Europe and the Middle East, US Central Command said.

"US Central Command forces conducted a unilateral helicopter raid in northern Syria in the early morning... targeting a senior ISIS Syria leader and operational planner," Centcom said in a statement, using another acronym for Daesh.

The target of the strike was "responsible for planning terror attacks in the Middle East and Europe", it alleged.

"The raid resulted in the probable death of the targeted individual" while "two other armed individuals were killed", the statement said, without identifying any of them.

No civilians or US troops were hurt, the statement added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike "targeted the building where a Daesh member was present" in Al Suwaydah, a village about 25 kilometres west of the town of Jarabulus on Syria's northern border with Turkey.

The Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor that relies on sources on the ground, said the strike killed the main target and two other fighters.

The Daesh member had previously been imprisoned in Kurdish-held Manbij, south of Jarabulus, according to the Observatory.

He had taken refuge in the Al Suwaydah area around six months earlier under the protection of a pro-Turkish group, it added.

Local residents told AFP that the man was killed as he was trying to flee and that his body was handed over to one of his brothers.

A Turkish-backed rebel group deployed in the Al Suwaydah area said in a statement that two of its fighters were killed after they went to the site of the raid.

Many former Daesh militants joined pro-Turkish groups after the extremists lost their last scraps of territory in Syria in March 2019, observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Earlier this month, the US military said it had launched a strike in Syria killing senior Daesh leader Khalid Aydd Ahmad Al Jabouri, who Centcom said was responsible for planning attacks in Turkey and Europe.

In October 2019, Washington announced it had killed Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi in an operation in north-western Syria.

His two successors have also been killed: The first in a US operation in north-western Syria and the second in an operation by former Syrian rebels in the country’s south.

Some 900 US troops remain in Syria, most in the Kurdish-administered northeast, as part of a US-led coalition battling remnants of IS, which remains active in both Syria and neighbouring Iraq, operating out of hideouts in desert and mountain areas.

Daesh “remains able to conduct operations within the region with a desire to strike beyond the Middle East”, Centcom chief Gen. Michael Kurilla was quoted as saying in Monday’s statement.

In separate attacks on Sunday, suspected Daesh fighters killed at least 36 truffle hunters and five shepherds in Syria, the observatory reported, with 17 pro-regime fighters among the dead.