The leader of the Islamic State armed group in Syria was killed in a US drone strike in the northwest of the country on Tuesday, the Pentagon said.
Maher al-Agal, presented as “one of the five most senior leaders” of the organization, was killed while riding a motorcycle near the town of Jindires and his closest adviser was “seriously injured”, Pentagon Central Command said in a statement.
Maher al-Agal was “in charge of aggressively pursuing the development of networks [du groupe armé État Islamique (EI)] out of Iraq and Syria”, and “the elimination of these leaders [du groupe] IS will disrupt the terrorist organization’s ability to plan and carry out attacks around the world,” Central Command spokesman Colonel Joe Buccino said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an NGO with an extensive network of sources in Syria, confirmed the death of Maher al-Agal in a drone strike.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters supported by Washington, for their part indicated that one person had been killed and another injured in an airstrike targeting a motorcycle in the Aleppo region, without identifying the victims.
There is little information on Maher al-Agal, presented by the OSDH as “the governor for the Levant” of the jihadist organization.
After a meteoric rise in power in 2014 in Iraq and neighboring Syria and the conquest of vast territories, the IS organization saw its self-proclaimed “caliphate” being overthrown under the blow of successive offensives in these two countries, respectively in 2017 and 2019.
In February, US President Joe Biden announced the death of the group’s former leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurachi, who blew himself up during a US special forces operation in the north. -western Syria, a region under the control of jihadists.