WASHINGTON — For the second time in simply over every week, U.S. Particular Operations forces carried out helicopter raids in opposition to the Islamic State in japanese Syria, this time capturing six operatives together with a senior official who the navy mentioned was concerned in plotting and enabling terrorist assaults.
The Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees U.S. troops in Syria, mentioned in an announcement on Tuesday that the primary goal of three pre-dawn raids over the previous 48 hours was a senior Islamic State Syria provincial official identified by the nom de guerre al-Zubaydi.
Final Sunday, helicopter-borne American commandos swooped in on another ISIS official, often called Anas, killing him and an affiliate in an almost three-hour gun battle in japanese Syria, the navy mentioned.
On this week’s assault, personnel from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or S.D.F., the American counterterrorism associate in northeastern Syria, accompanied the U.S. troops, the navy mentioned.
“These partnered operations reaffirm Centcom’s steadfast dedication to the area and the enduring defeat of ISIS,” Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the pinnacle of the command, mentioned in an announcement. “The seize of those ISIS operatives will disrupt the terrorist group’s means to additional plot and perform destabilizing assaults.”
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No Individuals have been injured within the raids, officers mentioned. An preliminary evaluation indicated that no civilians have been killed or injured, the navy assertion mentioned.
The truth that the Pentagon despatched commandos to kill or seize the Islamic State officers, quite than use a much less dangerous drone operation, indicated their significance.
The US has labored for years with the Syrian Democratic Forces to battle the Islamic State in Syria, and a number of other hundred U.S. forces stay in territory the group controls in northeastern Syria close to the Turkish border.
However that partnership has enraged Turkey, a U.S. ally and member of NATO, which views Syria’s Kurdish fighters as a part of the Kurdistan Staff’ Get together. The group has fought a bloody, decades-long insurgency in opposition to the Turkish state aimed toward gaining independence or higher autonomy. Turkey, the European Union and the USA take into account the rebel group, often called the P.Okay.Okay., a terrorist group.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has began a sequence of airstrikes in opposition to Kurdish militants in northern Syria in latest weeks and warned {that a} floor operation will quickly observe.
The S.D.F. briefly suspended the joint counterterrorism operation with the USA, suspecting an imminent Turkish assault. Fearing the lack of their predominant counterterrorism associate within the area, American officers rushed to tamp down tensions, not less than for the second, and operations quickly resumed.
The raids this month have been the primary main American counterterrorism operation in northeastern Syria since U.S. Particular Operations forces carried out two strikes in opposition to ISIS in October that killed three senior figures answerable for arming and recruiting fighters and plotting assaults, in response to American and Syrian Kurdish officers.
Late final month, the Islamic State introduced that its chief, whose id has remained shrouded in thriller, had been killed in battle lower than 9 months after taking cost of the terrorist group.
A Central Command spokesman confirmed in an announcement quickly after the ISIS announcement that the chief, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, had been killed in mid-October by anti-government rebels in southern Syria.
The 2 earlier ISIS leaders have been killed in separate raids by Particular Operations forces on secure homes in northern Syria. The Islamic State additionally named a successor final month however supplied no details about him apart from a nom de guerre.
The management transition, introduced by a voice message on Telegram, got here at a time of utmost weak spot for the group, which has been diminished in just a few years from the world’s most fearsome terrorist community to a low-level insurgency struggling to take care of its relevance in principally rural elements of nations torn by battle.
