IS mastermind of European terror attacks killed by US military in Syria

The US military say they have carried out a strike in northwestern Syria killing a senior Islamic State group official responsible for planning terrorist attacks in Europe.

Soldiers at a US military base in northeastern Syria. AP - Darko Bandic

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said IS leader Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri was killed in a strike on Monday.

The statement did not specify the exact location of the action but stressed  that "no civilians were killed or injured".

"Though degraded", the jihadist group, which was ousted from its last territory in Syria in 2019, "remains able to conduct operations within the region with a desire to strike beyond the Middle East," said CENTCOM commander General Michael Kurilla.

Jabouri was also believed to be working to develop the leadership structure of Islamic State, and his death will "temporarily disrupt the organisation's ability to plot external attacks," CENTCOM said.

IS has claimed a number of attacks in Europe in recent years, including the November 2015 attacks in Paris and its suburbs that killed 130 people and another in the French city of Nice in July 2016 in which 86 people lost their lives.

The 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.

Committed to enduring defeat of IS

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the conflict in Syria, said Jabouri was killed in a US drone strike in the Idlib region of the northwest, an area still controlled by jihadists.

It said he was killed while speaking on a telephone as he walked in the open near where he was staying.

The Observatory said that Jabouri, who was posing as a Syrian, had sought refuge in the area 10 days ago.

The CENTCOM chief said that IS, despite no longer controlling any major territory in either Syria or Iraq, "continues to represent a threat to the region and beyond.

"CENTCOM remains committed to the enduring defeat" of IS, Kurilla said.

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

Ambushes

In October 2019, Washington announced it had killed IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an operation in northwestern Syria.

His two successors have also been killed: the first during a US operation in northwestern Syria, the second in an operation by former Syrian rebels in the country's south.

In February this year, a US helicopter raid killed IS commander Hamza al-Homsi, who oversaw the jihadists' operations in northeastern Syria. Four US military personnel were wounded in the operation.

Inside Syria, IS has carried out a spate of attacks this year, many of them opportunistic.

Impoverished Syrians foraging for desert truffles to sell have been a particular target for the jihadists in recent months, with dozens killed in ambushes.

(With AFP)