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US targets IS leader linked to Kassig murder
The US-led coalition carried out a series of airstrikes in Syria targeting a senior Islamic State (IS) commander involved in the murder of US aid worker Peter Kassig.
Coalition spokesman Sean Ryan said: “coalition forces conducted precision strikes against a senior ISIS commander, Abu al Umarayn, and several other ISIS members on Dec. 2 in the Badiyah Desert,” after determining an “imminent threat” from the group.
He added that Abu al Umarayn “was implicated in the murder of American citizen… Peter Kassig”, kidnapped in Syria in 2013 and executed in November 2014. Moreover he was “directly implicated in the execution of a number of other prisoners.” Ryan said coalition air strikes “continued to disrupt IS’s battlefield command and control.”
Yesterday, Syria’s state news agency said that the U.S.-led coalition fired missiles from the U.S. military base near Syria’s border with Iraq and Jordan, at a Syrian army position in the east of the country. SANA reports that the positions targeted on Sunday night were in the Ghorab Mountains, causing some “material damage,” but no deaths or injuries. However, the US-led coalition is yet to comment on the strike.
Such attacks by the U.S.-led coalition against Syrian troops have been rare. In 2016, warplanes bombed Syrian army positions in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour and killed dozens of soldiers.
The recent alleged airstrikes came three days after Saudi-owned TV station Al Arabiya reported that Israeli planes attacked Iranian militia positions in the country’s south. The Israeli Defence force commented on Friday that it found fragments which most likely belonged to a Syrian anti-aircraft missile in an open field in the Golan Heights.
President Erdogan met President Putin at the G20 summit on Saturday and agreed to hold a summit to discuss the situation in Syria’s Idlib province, where the two countries are trying to create a sustainable demilitarised zone. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned that a full-scale military operation in Idlib province could lead to a “humanitarian catastrophe,” and cautioned against the use of chemical weapons.