BEIRUT (AP) — A U.S. helicopter raid in northern Syria on Monday morning killed a leader of the extremist Islamic State group, according to the U.S. military.
The leader of the armed group, who has not been identified, was “responsible for planning terrorist attacks in the Middle East and Europe”, according to a statement from the US Central Command. Two other “armed people” were killed along with the target of the attack, the statement added. No U.S. civilians or military personnel were injured in the operation, according to the military.
The White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense group operating in opposition-held areas in northern Syria, said it had transported two injured in the incident to a local hospital, which it later said they were dead. A third person was killed when US forces landed in the raid, according to the White Helmets.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish group that collaborates with the United States in operations against the ISIS group in northeast Syria, said the operation began at a base near the town of Kobani and was aimed at a military compound of a Turkish-backed armed group. opposition group, Suqour al-Shamal, in the town of Suwayda in the Jarablus region, near the Turkish border.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that monitors the war, reported that the raid ended with the arrest of an ISIS group leader and the deaths of three people. The US military did not mention any arrests.
The Observatory said “violent clashes” erupted when the helicopter landed, the first such landing on record this year.
There are at least 900 US troops deployed in Syria, along with an undisclosed number of contractors.
The Islamic State group, known by its acronym ISIS, rampaged through Iraq and Syria in 2014, seizing large swaths of territory. Although it was defeated in Syria in 2019, there are still sleeper cells that carry out occasional attacks against military and civilian targets.