Maher Al-Agal, presented as “one of the five most senior leaders” of IS, was killed while riding a motorcycle near the town of Jandairis and his closest adviser was “seriously injured”, Pentagon Central Command said in a statement.
Maher al-Agal was “in charge of aggressively pursuing the development of IS networks outside of Iraq and Syria”, and “the elimination of these IS leaders will disrupt the capabilities of the terrorist organization planning and carrying out attacks around the world,” said Central Command spokesman Col. Joe Buccino.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an NGO with an extensive network of sources in Syria, confirmed the death of Maher al-Agal in a drone strike.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters supported by Washington, for their part indicated that one person had been killed and another injured in an airstrike targeting a motorcycle in the Aleppo region, without identifying the victims.
There is little information on Maher al-Agal, presented by the OSDH as “the governor for the Levant” of the jihadist organization.
After a meteoric rise in 2014 in Iraq and neighboring Syria and the conquest of vast territories, the IS saw its self-proclaimed “caliphate” overthrown under the blow of successive offensives in these two countries, respectively in 2017 and 2019. .
In February, US President Joe Biden announced the death of former IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hachimi al-Qurachi, who blew himself up during a US special forces operation in the north -Western Syria, a region under the control of jihadists.