WASHINGTON — The U.S. navy carried out a drone strike in Syria on Tuesday that officers stated killed a high Islamic State commander, the third main American counterterrorism operation within the nation’s northwest prior to now month.
The assault killed Maher al-Agal, the chief of the terrorist group’s Syria department and one in all its high 5 leaders worldwide, and severely injured one other militant, in accordance with statements from the White Home and the navy’s Central Command. Mr. al-Agal was answerable for “aggressively pursuing the event of ISIS networks exterior of Iraq and Syria,” the navy stated.
“His dying in Syria takes a key terrorist off the sector and considerably degrades the flexibility of ISIS to plan, useful resource and conduct their operations within the area,” President Biden stated in an announcement.
“It sends a robust message to all terrorists who threaten our homeland and our pursuits all over the world,” he added. “The US will likely be relentless in its efforts to convey you to justice.”
The drone strike was the newest in a sequence of American navy operations towards ISIS and Al Qaeda in Syria, which have been comparatively uncommon because the fall of the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate in 2019.
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On June 16, Army Delta Pressure commandos seized Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi, a high Islamic State bomb maker and operations facilitator also referred to as Salim, in a floor raid in Aleppo, Syria. 9 days later, america carried out an airstrike in Idlib Province that the navy stated killed Abu Hamzah al Yemeni, a senior chief of Hurras al-Din, Al Qaeda’s department in Syria.
The U.S. assault on Tuesday got here as Mr. Biden ready to depart for Israel and Saudi Arabia, his first go to to the Center East as president. The journey will largely concentrate on Iran’s nuclear program and malign actions within the area. A White Home official stated on Monday that Russia was in search of tons of of surveillance drones from Iran, together with these able to firing missiles, to make use of within the struggle in Ukraine.
There are nonetheless vivid reminders of the smoldering risk posed by Al Qaeda and ISIS, which American intelligence officers say has about 10,000 fighters who’ve shifted to guerrilla operations in Iraq and Syria because the collapse of the caliphate.
A dangerous predawn raid in northwest Syria in early February by U.S. Particular Operations forces resulted within the dying of the Islamic State’s general chief, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. The 2-hour assault by helicopter-borne commandos got here days after the top of the most important U.S. fight involvement with the Islamic State because the finish of its caliphate. American forces backed a Kurdish-led militia in northeastern Syria because it fought for greater than every week to oust Islamic State fighters from a jail that they had occupied within the metropolis of Hasaka.
Tons of of individuals have been killed within the battle, which provided stark proof that the group’s capability to sow chaotic violence persists, counterterrorism specialists stated.
The American operation in February that resulted in Mr. al-Qurayshi’s dying resembled an assault in October 2019 wherein Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the earlier chief of the Islamic State, died when he detonated a suicide vest as U.S. forces raided a hide-out close to the place Mr. al-Qurayshi was.
“It’s clear that ISIS members are entrenched in northwestern Syria, whilst their leaders proceed to be apprehended and killed there,” Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism analyst on the Soufan Group, a safety consulting agency based mostly in New York, stated on Tuesday. “It appears extra seemingly that they’ve extraordinarily restricted choices and that their freedom of motion has been restricted to a handful of areas the place they imagine they will mix in with different jihadists and huge civilian populations.”
