US forces have killed several leaders of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in Syria during a helicopter operation and an airstrike in the past 24 hours, the US command said on Thursday.
The helicopter operation targeting Rakan Wahid al-Shamri was carried out overnight from Wednesday to Thursday in northeastern Syria, the US military command for the Middle East (Centcom) wrote in a first press release.
It took place in an enclave held by auxiliary forces of the Syrian regime, near the town of Qamichli controlled by Kurdish forces allied with American troops, according to concordant sources.
This is the first time since the start of the war in Syria in 2011 that US troops have carried out a helicopter operation in an area under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. (OSDH).
Hundreds of US troops are deployed in northeast Syria as part of a US-led anti-jihadist coalition, which continues to fight with its Kurdish allies from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the sleeper cells of the IS.
The American command then indicated in a second press release that it had killed two leaders of the jihadist group in an airstrike in northern Syria, without specifying where exactly.
This second attack, according to Centcom, killed “both Abu Hashum al-Umawi […] and another senior ISIS operative”, without affecting civilians.
“This strike will weaken the ability of the IS to destabilize the region and to strike our forces and our partners”, commented the boss of the American command in the region, General Michael Kurilla.
Not very well-known
“On Wednesday evening, US forces carried out a helicopter raid near Qamichli, targeting Rakan Wahid al-Shamri, an IS official known to facilitate the smuggling of weapons and the clandestine transportation of fighters,” the first statement said. from Centcom.
“The targeted individual was killed and one of his companions injured. Two other companions were detained,” Centcom added, without specifying the nationality of the dead official. No US servicemen and no civilians were killed or injured in the operation.
In Damascus, Syrian state television reported a helicopter operation by “US occupation forces” in which one person was killed. She gave no further details.
“Three American helicopters carrying troops have landed” near the village of Moulouk Saray, a local resident told AFP.
The American soldiers “called using loudspeakers the inhabitants to stay at home”, before searching a house. They “killed one person and abducted two”, he added.
According to him, the person killed was a displaced person from the Syrian province of Hassaké, little known to the inhabitants and who called himself Abu Hayel.
The villager claimed that a firefight pitted the US soldiers against a Syrian regime proxy force.
The OSDH confirmed the death of Rakan Wahid al-Shamri.
Sleeper cells
After a meteoric rise in power in 2014 in Iraq and neighboring Syria and the conquest of vast territories, the IS saw its self-proclaimed “caliphate” crumble under the impact of successive offensives. He was defeated in 2017 in Iraq and in 2019 in Syria.
But the extremist group responsible for multiple abuses continues to carry out attacks through sleeper cells in both countries.
The United States continues to target IS leaders.
In July, they killed a senior IS official in a drone strike in northwestern Syria. In June, they captured an IS leader in a helicopter operation in northern Syria.
ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US raid in 2019 and his successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurachi, was killed in February 2022 in a US special forces operation in the north- western Syria, a region largely controlled by the jihadists.
The complex war in Syria, a fragmented country where different protagonists intervene, has claimed around 500,000 lives since 2011.