A leader of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group responsible for planning attacks in Europe, Khaled Aydd Ahmad Al Jaburi, was killed in an attack in Syria on Tuesday, the US military’s Middle East Command (Centcom) said. Centcom stressed that Al Jaburi was responsible for planning IS attacks in Europe and that his death would temporarily disrupt the organization’s ability to promote attacks abroad.
The Islamic State group claimed a number of attacks in Europe during its heyday, when it controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq and had proclaimed a “caliphate.” IS claimed the November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris, the July 14, 2016 Nice attack in southeastern France, the three suicide bombings in Belgium in 2016, and the attacks in Spain on August 17-18, 2017.
The attack took place in northwestern Syria, in Idlib province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), which reported that a US drone targeted the IS leader in the jihadist-controlled area. The man, an Iraqi posing as a Syrian and calling himself Khaled, had taken refuge in this area ten days ago, the Observatory said.
Despite the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in 2019, several hundred US soldiers, deployed in the northeast of the country as part of the anti-jihadist coalition, have continued to fight alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), targeting suspected ISIS members. Since then, the US has frequently announced that it is targeting IS operatives who have taken refuge in Syria.