US: Daesh leader killed in Syria airstrike

The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has announced that it has killed a Syria-based Iraqi national who is a leader in the Daesh extremist organisation, as well as confirming that it has killed a leader of another major Syrian rebel group today.

The Daesh leader, named as Mahmud Al-Isawi, was killed on New Year ’s Eve by a “precision strike” in Raqqa, the militant group’s capital in Syria.

“Mahmud Al-Isawi was a long-standing member ISIL member who supported the organisation’s media and intelligence structure in Fallujah before relocating to [Raqqa],” CENTCOM said, using another acronym for Daesh, adding that he “controlled the flow of instructions and finances between ISIL-held areas and ISIL leaders.”

Al-Isawi was also known to have facilitated trans-regional travel with other Daesh external operations coordinators, including Abd Al-Basit Al-Iraqi, who was killed by another US-led Coalition airstrike on 2 November 2016.

 JFS commander also killed

Daesh was not the only organisation to lose a senior facilitator and commander, as today the United States was also accused of conducting an airstrike in Syria that killed a leading member of a major Syrian rebel group and his son today, in the second major attack on the rebel group this week.

The Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham (JFS) group, previously known as the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front, accused the US-led military coalition of killing Sheikh Younes Shoueib, a member of its consultative council, in a statement published on Telegram, a messaging service.

It did not say where he was killed. JFS is one of the most powerful rebel groups in the northwestern province of Idlib, where earlier this week some two dozen people were killed in an airstrike on one of its headquarters. The group also accused the US-led coalition of carrying out that strike.

Fateh al-Sham broke its ties to Al-Qaeda last year, and has been excluded, along with Daesh, from the nationwide Syria ceasefire deal brokered by Russia and Turkey last week.