US Kills Senior ISIS Leader in Syria

On Tuesday, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that a senior Islamic State leader was killed in Syria on Monday, dealing another blow to the group, which was expelled from its self-proclaimed caliphate years ago but is still widely considered a threat.

The US Central Command named the senior ISIS leader as Khalid ‘Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, saying that he was responsible for planning ISIS attacks in Europe and Turkey and establishing the group’s hierarchy in Turkey.

According to sources in Syria, he was killed in a drone attack in the rebel-held northwest, where other ISIS leaders have been hiding, including former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who died in a US raid in 2019.

CENTCOM said that no civilians were harmed in the missile strike and added that ISIS “continues to pose a threat to the region and beyond.”

It added that the demise of Jabouri would “temporarily disrupt the group’s ability to plot external attacks.”

At its peak in 2014, ISIS controlled one-third of Iraq and Syria, but it was vanquished in both countries. However, militants continue to carry out insurgent attacks.

An intelligence source indicated that Jabouri had been tracked for several months as he travelled between the Syrian cities and towns of Hasaka, Raqqa, Jarablus, and al-Bab, and that he was in Idlib province when he was killed.

“They received a tip-off that he was in Idlib, so they placed him under observation for some time and then executed the strike,” the source said. The source added that Jabouri was killed while on the phone.

According to two local sources, Jabouri was attacked near his home on the outskirts of the village of Kaftin, a few kilometers from where Baghdadi was killed in 2019. He was living with his wife and 12-year-old son.

Jabouri originally came from Deir al-Zor in southeastern Syria.

According to a UN report released in February, the threat posed by ISIS and its affiliates to international peace and security in 2022 was high in the second half of the year, and it had increased in and around conflict zones where it maintained a presence.

The UN report estimated that ISIS has roughly 5,000 to 7,000 members and adherents scattered between Iraq and Syria, with approximately half of them being fighters.

A jihadist faction that had previously fought ISIS in Syria’s 12-year-long conflict currently controls northwest Syria.

ISIS once governed a third of Syria and Iraq based on its ultra-religious interpretation of Islam. It perpetrated atrocities such as the massacre of thousands of Yazidis, and its militants carried out numerous attacks abroad, including a rampage that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015.

(Additional reporting by Khalil Ashawi, Akriti Sharma and Bharat Govind Gautam in Bengaluru; Writing by Bengaluru team and Tom Perry; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Michael Georgy, Gerry Doyle, William Maclean)