The Central Command of the United States Armed Forces (Centcom) announced on Sunday the death of a leader of the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) during a bombing carried out two days ago in eastern Syria. According to an official statement, the IS leadership shot down was identified as Abu Osama al-Muhajer, who directed the group’s operations in eastern Syria. Centcom noted that “there is no indication that any civilians were killed in this attack”.
“We have shown that we remain committed to the defeat of the Islamic State throughout the region,” said General Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of the US Armed Forces Central Command, in a statement. The military, moreover, insisted that the jihadist group “continues to be a threat, not only to the region. [do Oriente Médio], but much further.” The IS was defeated territorially in Syria in March 2019, but it still has active cells in various parts of the country, especially in the vast Badia desert, in the center of the country. Centcom also pointed out that al-Muhajer’s death will interrupt and limit IS’s ability to plan and carry out actions, while indicating that both US and allied forces in Syria and Iraq will continue to work to achieve the group’s “lasting defeat”.
According to the note, the bombing that killed the IS leader was carried out with MQ-9 drones, unmanned aircraft that, on the same day, had been “harassed by Russian planes” for two hours. In a statement published on Saturday, the United States denounced that Russian planes dropped parachute flares on the drones and flew “dangerously close” to them. The US leads an international coalition that fights the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria, although with some frequency it launches unilateral operations against jihadist targets of high and medium relevance.
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