Global Courant
A strike on Friday resulted in the death of al-Muhajer, ISIL leader in eastern Syria, CENTCOM says.
The US military says it has killed a leader of the ISIL (ISIS) group in eastern Syria in a drone strike.
Friday’s strike resulted in the death of Osama al-Muhajer, the US central command said in a statement on Sunday.
“We have made it clear that we remain committed to the defeat of ISIS across the region,” said US Central Command (CENTCOM) Chief General Michael Kurilla, using a different acronym for the ISIL armed group.
“ISIS remains a threat not only to the region but also far beyond,” he added.
No civilians were killed in the operation, according to CENTCOM, but coalition forces are “assessing reports of a civilian wound”.
It said the drones used in the attack had been harassed by Russian warplanes earlier in the day.
Friday’s attack, Centcom said, “was carried out by the same MQ-9s (drones) that…had been harassed by Russian planes in an encounter that had lasted nearly two hours.”
US drones participating in operations against IS in Syria were harassed by Russian military jets for the second time in 24 hours on Thursday, a US commander said at the time.
Air Force Lieutenant General Alexus Grynkewich said the planes “dropped flares in front of the drones and flew dangerously close, endangering the safety of all aircraft involved”.
In another incident on Wednesday, three Russian jets dropped parachute flares on US drones, forcing them to take evasive action, Grynkewich said, calling on Moscow to “stop this reckless behavior”.
The two separate incidents on Wednesday and Thursday involving Russian fighter jets and US Reaper drones were captured on video, said the US.
A diplomatic dispute briefly erupted earlier this year when the US claimed Russian jets were responsible for downing a Reaper drone, worth more than $30 million and packed with sensitive US spy technology, operating over the Black Sea.
Moscow denied its fighter jets were responsible for the drone crashing into the sea in March, but footage released by the US military showed Russian planes maneuvering to obstruct the drone’s flight path
Russia is a key ally of the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
With the support of both Moscow and Iran, Assad has regained much of the ground lost in the early stages of the Syrian conflict that erupted in 2011 when the government brutally crushed pro-democracy protests.
The last pockets of armed resistance against Assad’s government include large parts of the northern rebel-held province of Idlib.
The United States has deployed about 1,000 troops to Syria as part of international efforts to fight ISIL, which was defeated in Syria in 2019 but still has hideouts in remote desert areas and carries out regular attacks.
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