Syria drone strike kills suspected IS member

Tal Abyad, Syria (AFP):

A drone strike in northern Syria has killed a suspected member of ISIS.

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

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

The suspected militant was killed while on a motorbike, according to the monitor which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

“I heard aircraft and then a first strike followed by a second one less than a minute later,” resident Ismail al-Barho said.

“I came to the site of the strikes and found a charred body,” he said, adding that a civilian was also wounded.

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

The resident spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Washington first deployed troops in northeast Syria in 2014 as part of a coalition to combat the IS group.

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

They have since used these hideouts to ambush Kurdish-led forces and Syrian government troops, while also continuing to mount attacks in Iraq.

In July, the Pentagon said it had killed Syria’s top IS member in a drone strike in the north of the country.

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