Senior ISIS Leader Killed in US Military Operation in Syria

A mural bears the logo of the ISIS terrorist group, on March 1, 2017. (Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images)

A senior ISIS leader has been killed in a U.S. military operation in Syria, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement on April 3.

Khalid ’Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, who was in charge of planning attacks in Europe and developing the leadership structure of the terrorist group ISIS, was killed in a drone strike on April 3, officials said.

“ISIS continues to represent a threat to the region and beyond,” CENTCOM commander, Gen. Erik Kurilla, said in the statement. “Though degraded, the group remains able to conduct operations within the region with a desire to strike beyond the Middle East.”

The military statement added that al-Jabouri’s death “will temporarily disrupt the organization’s ability to plot external attacks” and noted that CENTCOM’s operations against ISIS alongside partner forces in Iraq and Syria continue.

No civilians were killed or injured in the strike, CENTCOM noted.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), an opposition war monitor, said on Monday that al-Jabouri was killed near his home while he was walking and speaking on the phone. According to SOHR, the senior ISIS leader had moved to Idlib 10 days prior to this death.

In an April 3 post on Twitter, The White Helmets organization, officially known as Syria Civil Defence, said that one person had been killed by a missile strike from “an unidentified drone” on the outskirts of the town of Killi, north of Idlib, in Syria.

“Our teams responded and took the injured person to Bab Al-Hawa Hospital, where he died,” the organization said.

The latest strike comes after another senior ISIS leader, Hamza al-Homsi, was killed in a U.S. helicopter raid in Syria in February, according to CENTCOM. Four U.S. soldiers and a dog were injured during that strike and were receiving treatment, officials said in a statement at the time.

‘Decline in Morale’

Two other ISIS leaders have been killed by the U.S. military in Syria in recent years: former head of ISIS Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who committed suicide during an October 2022 raid, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019, who was killed after U.S. Special Forces launched a nighttime raid on an ISIS-held compound in the north of the country.

At its peak in 2014, ISIS controlled large swathes of Iraq and Syria and had between 20,000 and 31,000 fighters, according to CIA estimates.

However, U.S.-backed counter-offensives ended the last of their “caliphate” territorial control in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019. The group now has an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 members and supporters spread between Syria and Iraq, roughly half of them fighters, according to a United Nations report published in February.

Despite the report noting a “decline in morale” among ISIS core members in both nations, Ambassador Richard Mills, deputy representative to the U.N., told a security council meeting in February that ISIS “continues to take advantage of conflict, corruption, and inequality to attract followers and organize its terrorist attacks.”

The latest drone strike comes as the U.S.-led multinational coalition against ISIS has conducted a number of strikes in northern Syria in recent months targeting al-Qaida-linked terrorists and senior members of ISIS.

Those strikes resulted in the deaths of members of the al-Qaida offshoot Horas al-Din, which was formed in 2018 and includes hardcore al-Qaida members who broke away from Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, the strongest insurgent group in the rebel-held Idlib province.