A US helicopter raid on Monday focused a senior Islamic State group chief in Syria suspected of plotting assaults in Europe and the Center East, US Central Command mentioned.

“US Central Command forces carried out a unilateral helicopter raid in northern Syria within the early morning… concentrating on a senior ISIS Syria chief and operational planner,” Centcom mentioned in an announcement, utilizing one other acronym for IS.

The goal of the strike was “chargeable for planning terror assaults within the Center East and Europe”, it alleged.

“The raid resulted within the possible demise of the focused particular person” whereas “two different armed people have been killed”, the assertion mentioned, with out figuring out any of them.

No civilians or US troops have been harm, the assertion added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights mentioned the strike “focused the constructing the place an IS member was current” in Al Suwaydah, a village about 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of the city of Jarabulus on Syria’s northern border with Turkey.

The Observatory, a Britain-based battle monitor that depends on sources on the bottom, mentioned the strike killed the primary goal and two different fighters.

A Turkish-backed insurgent group mentioned in an announcement that two of its fighters have been killed after they went to the location of the raid within the Jarabulus space.

Earlier this month, the US army mentioned it had launched a strike in Syria killing senior IS chief Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, who Centcom mentioned was chargeable for planning assaults in Turkey and Europe.

In October 2019, Washington introduced it had killed IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an operation in northwestern Syria.

His two successors have additionally been killed: the primary in a US operation in northwestern Syria and the second in an operation by former Syrian rebels within the nation’s south.

Some 900 US troops stay in Syria, most within the Kurdish-administered northeast, as a part of a US-led coalition battling remnants of IS, which stays lively in each Syria and neighbouring Iraq, working out of hideouts in desert and mountain areas.

IS “stays in a position to conduct operations inside the area with a want to strike past the Center East”, Centcom chief Normal Michael Kurilla was quoted as saying in Monday’s assertion.

In separate assaults on Sunday, suspected IS fighters killed at the very least 36 truffle hunters and 5 shepherds in Syria, the Observatory reported, with 17 pro-regime fighters among the many lifeless.