SOHR: Two Jihadist Commanders Killed in Syrian Drone Strike

A drone strike on Monday killed two jihadist commanders near al-Qaeda in the Idlib region of northwestern Syria, war monitors said.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the raid was carried out by a US-led United Nations fighting jihadists in Syria and Iraq.
US troops confirmed the killing of al-Qaeda officials shortly after the coalition told AFP that it had not conducted a strike in Idlib on Monday.
In a statement, US Central Command (CENTCOM) spokeswoman Lieutenant Josie Lynn Lenny said, “The U.S. military today launched a dynamic counterterrorism strike against senior al-Qaeda leaders near Idlib, Syria. “.
“The first sign is that we attacked the individual we were aiming for, and there are no signs of civilian casualties as a result of the strike,” she said.
According to the observatory, the strike targeted vehicles on the road leading further north from Idlib to Binnish.
Observatory chief Lami Abdel Rahman told AFP that one of the murdered commanders was a Tunisian and the other was from Yemen or Saudi Arabia and did not identify the group to which he belonged.
The Idlib region is dominated by former al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, but there are also rebels and other jihadists.
Jihadist factions have been the target of Syrian, Russian, US, and international coalition strikes in the past.
Russia’s airstrikes in Idlib killed nine jihadists in October 2019, and a month ago a US strike killed at least 40 jihadist leaders.
Since its inception in 2011, the Syrian war has killed about 500,000 people in a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, swirling into a complex battlefield involving foreign troops, militias and jihadists.

 

 

 

Source:  Indian News Republic