The US military announced on Friday that it killed a senior leader of the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group in a raid in Syria, adding that four soldiers were injured in the operation on Thursday evening. “The target, a senior IS official, Hamza al-Homsi, was killed,” the brief statement from the United States military command for the Middle East (Centcom) said.
The four soldiers, hit by an explosion during this attack in northeastern Syria, are being treated in Iraq. A working dog taking part in the operation was also injured, the statement said. Since the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in 2019, hundreds of American soldiers, deployed in northeastern Syria as part of the anti-jihadist coalition, continue to fight with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, dominated by the Kurds) and to target suspected ISIS members.
On February 10, another operation carried out with the FDS led to the seizure of weapons and the death of another IS official. In 2022, two other leaders of the group were killed, one in February, by American special forces in the northwest and the other in October, by former rebels from the province of Deraa (south) supported by the system of government. In October 2019, the United States announced the death of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during an American operation in northwestern Syria.
