The US military’s Middle East Command (Centcom) said on Friday that it had killed a senior leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group, Hamza al-Homsi, in a raid in Syria.
Four US soldiers were wounded in the operation on Thursday night, Centcom said in a statement.
The four servicemen, who were hit by an explosion during the attack in northeastern Syria, are being treated in Iraq. A service dog involved in the operation was also injured, the statement said.
Centcom spokesman Col. Joe Buccino later said the blast was caused by Homsi, who, he said, oversaw the deadly terrorist network in eastern Syria before he was killed in the raid.
The four wounded soldiers and the dog are in stable condition, he added.
Since the territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria in 2019, several hundred US troops, deployed in northeastern Syria as part of the anti-jihadist coalition, have continued to fight alongside the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and to target suspected ISIS members.
On 10 February, a joint operation with the SDF had led to the seizure of weapons and the death of another ISIS official.
In 2022, two more leaders of the group were killed, one in February, by US special forces in the northwest, and the other in October, by former rebels supported by the regime in the southern province of Deraa.
In October 2019, the US had announced the death of the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a US operation in northwestern Syria.
