US chopper raid in Syria kills IS boss who planned ‘attacks in Europe’

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Beirut: A helicopter raid by US forces in northern Syria has killed a senior leader of the militant Islamic State group, the US military confirmed.

Central Command said in a statement the IS leader, Abd-al-Hadi Mahmud al-Haji Ali, was “responsible for planning terror attacks in the Middle East and Europe.

A US Apache helicopter in a drill last week.Credit: AP

Two other alleged IS members, were killed along with al-Haji Ali who was the target of the raid, CENTCOM said. The statement said no civilians or US troops were hurt in the operation.

It said the raid was launched after intelligence uncovered a plan by IS to “kidnap officials abroad as leverage for [IS] initiatives.”

Syria’s White Helmets, a civil defence group operating in opposition-held areas of northern Syria, said it transported two people wounded during the raid to a local hospital, which later said they had died. A third person was killed when the US forces landed for the raid, the White Helmets said.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which partners with the US in anti-IS operations in the country’s north-east, said the operation was launched from a base near the town of Kobani and targeted a military site belonging to a Turkish-backed armed opposition group, Suqour al-Shamal, in the village of Suwayda in the region of Jarablus, near the Turkish border.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, initially reported that the raid had resulted in the arrest of a senior IS leader and killed three people. The US military made no mention of any arrests.

The Observatory said “violent clashes” took place after the helicopter landed, the first such landing this year.

At least 900 US troops are deployed in Syria, along with an undisclosed number of contractors.

The Islamic State group, which swept through Iraq and Syria in 2014, taking control of large swaths of territory, was defeated in Syria in 2019, but sleeper cells maintain a presence and periodically stage attacks on military and civilian targets.

AP

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