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Pentagon: US kills IS group leader in Syria in drone strike

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said Tuesday that it killed a leader of the Islamic State group in Syria in a drone strike.

U.S. Central Command said in a news release that Maher al-Agal was killed Tuesday and an unidentified senior official in the Islamic State group was seriously injured. The Pentagon said there were no civilian casualties, though it wasn’t possible to immediately confirm that information.

The U.S. carried out the strike outside Jindaris, a town in northwest Syria close to the Turkish border.

The Islamic State group at the height of its power controlled more than 40,000 square miles (103,600 square kilometers) stretching from Syria to Iraq and ruled more than 8 million people. While the group’s territorial state collapsed in 2019, its leaders have turned to guerilla tactics and have been able to “efficiently restructure themselves organizationally,” according to the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan think tank.

The strike on al-Agal comes months after the head of the group, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, killed himself during a raid of his hideout by American special forces. The U.S. said Al-Qurayshi blew himself up along with members of his family.

According to a war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, al-Agal was a former prominent commander of the Islamic State group during its control of Raqqa and had since moved farther north to Afrin in 2020 under Turkish-backed factions. He was most recently a commander in a Turkish-backed faction called Jaysh Al-Sharqiyyah.

News from © Canadian Press Enterprises Inc., 2021