US military kills three senior Islamic State leaders in Syria strikes
US strikes knocked off the jihadist group's second-highest Syrian commander and a smuggler believed to have helped kidnap and behead Kurdish officials.
American military forces in Syria killed three top Islamic State officials in two separate operations over the past 24 hours, US officials said.
The Islamic State’s deputy commander in Syria — one of the jihadist group's top-five ranking leaders whom US military officials named as Abu Hashum al-Umawi, aka Abu 'Ala — was killed in a drone strike in northern Syria around 6:23 p.m. local time on Thursday.
That strike also killed a second IS official, Abu Mu’ad al-Qahtani, whom US officials said was responsible for prisoner affairs. More than 1,000 hours of intelligence collection led to the operation, military officials said.
The precise location of Thursday’s drone strike was not immediately clear, but it came several hours after a rare helicopter-borne US special operations raid near the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli left another Islamic State operative dead and saw at least two of his associates captured.
