The US military announced that it had killed a senior member of an al-Qaeda-affiliated militant group in a strike in Syria on Friday.
The group, Tanzim Hurras ad-Din, “is a force linked to al-Qaeda in Syria and shares its goal of carrying out attacks against U.S. and Western interests,” the U.S. military’s Middle East Command (Centcom) wrote in a statement.
Abu Abdul Rahman al-Makki, killed “in a targeted kinetic attack in Syria,” was “a senior official in charge of terrorist operations in Syria,” Centcom said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights earlier said a drone strike on a motorcycle in the southern countryside of Idlib killed the man, saying he was Saudi.
The United States is deploying nearly 900 troops to Syria as part of the anti-jihadist coalition designed to fight the Islamic State group (IS).
ISIS seized control of swathes of Syria in 2014, imposing a reign of terror before being defeated in 2019 by a US-led international coalition aided by Syrian Kurdish forces.
Since the group’s territorial defeat, jihadists have retreated to the vast Syrian desert and continue to carry out deadly attacks, mainly targeting the army and Kurdish-dominated forces.
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