The United States announced on Tuesday that it had killed the leader of the Islamic State group in Syria in a drone strike in the northwest of the country, a new blow to the jihadist organization.
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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 ISIS networks outside of Iraq and Syria”, and “the elimination of these ISIS leaders will disrupt the capabilities of the terrorist organization to plan and carry out attacks around the world,” said Central Command spokesman Colonel 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.
He is presented by the OSDH as “the governor for the Levant” of the organization.
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.
But according to the SDF, the two men were linked to Ahrar al-Charkiya, a pro-Ankara Syrian armed group. This group had been placed on the US sanctions list in 2021, accused of abuses against the population committed by its fighters during the Turkish offensive in northern Syria two years earlier, and of having assassinated the Kurdish activist of women’s rights Hevrin Khalaf.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had denounced a potential war crime committed by the armed group.
Observers say Ahrar al-Charkiya has integrated former IS leaders into its ranks to fight Kurdish forces in areas controlled by Turkey and its allies in Syria.
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. .
Since then, the organization has been destabilized several times by the death or capture of its leaders in Syria.
ISIS top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US raid in 2019 and his successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurachi, was killed in February in a US special forces operation in the northwest of the country, a region under the control of jihadists.
In June, US forces captured a “high-profile IS official” in a helicopter operation in northern Syria. Hani Ahmed Al-Kurdi was a former IS leader in Raqa, a former stronghold of the jihadist group in Syria, according to the US-led anti-jihadist coalition.
Defeated militarily in its former strongholds, the EI “continues to represent a threat to the United States and its allies in the region”, however underlined Colonel Buccino.
The jihadist organization has also extended its influence in other regions of the world such as in the Sahel region, in Nigeria, in Yemen or in Afghanistan where it regularly claims attacks.