WASHINGTON: American forces killed an Islamic State group leader in a raid in Syria’s Aleppo province on Friday, the US military’s central command (Centcom) said.
The raid resulted “in the death of senior IS leader, Dhiya Zawba Muslih al-Hardani, and his two adult IS-affiliated sons”, Centcom said in a statement, using an acronym for the jihadist group.
“These IS individuals posed a threat to US and coalition forces, as well as the new Syrian government,” it said, adding that three women and three children were at the location that was raided and were unharmed in the operation.
The Islamic State group rose out of the chaos of the Syrian civil war to seize swaths of territory there and in neighboring Iraq over a decade ago.
It has since suffered major defeats in both countries, but the US still periodically targets the jihadist group’s remnants with raids or strikes to prevent it from resurging.