Drone attack in Syria kills suspected IS member | The Guardian Nigeria News

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A drone strike in northern Syria on Monday killed a suspected member of the Islamic State group, a war monitor and an AFP correspondent said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack that came days after US forces said they had targeted Islamic State officials in Syria in a series of raids.

Two explosions occurred near the Turkish-controlled border town of Tal Abyad in northern Syria, residents and an AFP correspondent said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a drone strike had targeted a suspected member of the jihadist group.

The suspected jihadist was killed while riding a motorcycle, according to the monitor which draws on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

“I heard planes and then a first hit followed by a second less than a minute later,” resident Ismail al-Barho told AFP.

“I came to the scene of the attacks and found a charred body,” he said, adding that a civilian was also injured.

Another resident identified the dead man as Ammar al-Yehya Ibn Ali, a 35-year-old Syrian who was known to have been a member of Islamic State.

The resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Monday’s attack came after US Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out a raid in northeastern Syria on Thursday, targeting an Islamic State officer known for facilitate the smuggling of weapons and fighters.

In a statement later the same day, he said he had launched another airstrike that killed two senior Islamic State members.

Washington first deployed troops to northeastern Syria in 2014 as part of a coalition to fight the Islamic State group.

When they lost the last territory they controlled after a US-led coalition-backed military attack in March 2019, IS remnants in Syria mostly retreated to desert hideouts.

Since then, they have used these hideouts to ambush Kurdish-led forces and Syrian government troops, while continuing to stage attacks in Iraq.

In July, the Pentagon said it had killed Syria’s top Islamic State jihadist in a drone strike in the country’s north.

CENTCOM said he had been “one of the top five” IS leaders.

The July attack came five months after a US overnight raid on the town of Atme that killed IS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi.

US officials said Qurashi, his wife and two children were killed when a bomb was detonated to prevent their capture.

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