US military drone strike kills senior ISIS leader in Syria

A drone strike carried out by the American-led coalition in northwestern Syria has killed a senior member of the Islamic State terrorist group who was responsible for planning attacks in Europe, the United States military said Tuesday April 4.

The drone strike conducted by U.S. Central Command forces on Monday killed Khalid ‘Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, who 

had also “developed the leadership structure for ISIS,” the U.S. military said. No civilians were killed or injured in the strike, the military added.

The senior ISIS member’s death was expected to “temporarily disrupt the organization’s ability to plot external attacks,” the military said.

“ISIS continues to represent a threat to the region and beyond,” CENTCOM chief General Michael Kurilla said in a statement. “Though degraded, the group remains able to conduct operations within the region with a desire to strike beyond the Middle East,” he warned.

The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, said on Monday that a person had been killed by a “missile strike from an unidentified drone” on the outskirts of the town of Killi, north of Idlib.

“Our teams responded and took the injured person to Bab Al-Hawa Hospital, where he died,” the White Helmets said in a tweet.

Monday’s strike was the latest in a series of attacks in recent years targeting senior members of ISIS in northwestern Syria.

In February, a drone strike killed two local activists initially identified as Horas al-Din members, according to The Associated Press. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights later said one of them was a senior member of ISIS.

In 2019, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then the world’s most wanted terrorist, was killed in October 2019 in a U.S.-led raid in northwestern Syria.

His successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was killed in a U.S. raid in February 2022, with subsequent leader Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi killed by Syrian rebels months later in October.