US Military Confirms Killing of High-Ranking Terrorist Leader

June 19, 2024 TruthUSA

U.S. military officials on Tuesday confirmed that an airstrike in Syria killed a top terrorist leader in ISIS over the past weekend.

U.S. military officials on Tuesday confirmed that an airstrike in Syria killed a top terrorist leader in ISIS.

The U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, said that it carried out the strike that killed Usamah Jamal Muhammad Ibrahim al-Janabi, described as a “senior ISIS official and facilitator,” according to a statement issued Tuesday.

With his death, ISIS’s capacity to “resource and conduct terror attacks” will be disrupted, it added. No civilians were harmed in the airstrike, the command force added.

“CENTCOM, alongside allies and partners in the region, will continue to execute operations to degrade ISIS operational capabilities and ensure its enduring defeat,” the statement concluded.

Since the civil war in Syria erupted in the early 2010s, the United States consistently targeted leaders of the terrorist group, which has recently resurged in other parts of the world.

The group’s most notorious leader and its founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, killed himself during an October 2019 raid that was being carried out by U.S. special forces in northwestern Idlib Province, Syria. Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was named as the group’s second leader, but he killed himself during a February 2022 raid by U.S. forces.

Related Stories

8 Arrested in Los Angeles, Other Cities Due to Potential ISIS Terror Ties

Sen. Cornyn Forewarns of Terror Threat on US Soil as ISIS-Linked Network Confirmed at Southern Border

At the end of last month, the U.S. African Command, or AFRICOM, said an airstrike in Somalia targeted ISIS terrorists and killed at least three “with no civilian casualties.”

It comes as multiple current and former U.S. officials have increasingly issued warnings about the resurgence of the group, namely its Afghanistan-based offshoot ISIS-K. The group claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack that killed at least 140 people in Moscow, Russia, earlier this year.

On Sunday, House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) warned the United States is facing the “highest level” for a possible terrorist attack, suggesting that the situation at the U.S.–Mexico border makes it possible for ISIS-aligned terrorists to creep into the country. He was responding to reports that several illegal immigrants were arrested this month who had ties with the terrorist group ISIS-K, or ISIS Khorosan.

“What’s important about these reports and what we’re seeing, especially in conjunction with [FBI] Director [Christopher] Wray’s public statements, that we are at the highest level of a possible terrorist threat, that the administration’s policies have absolutely directly related to threats to Americans,” Mr. Turner told CBS News.

Last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about requesting a classified briefing for all senators about ISIS threats, he told Fox News on June 12.

In recent months, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel by Hamas as well as the Russia attack, he’s become increasingly concerned about terrorism in the United States.

“Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once, but that is the case as I sit here today,” the FBI director said in a Senate hearing earlier in June.

Mr. Wray had also recently sounded the alarm on his concerns about possible human smuggling operations along the U.S.–Mexico border and that Mexico should also provide more support. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has also said in a June House hearing that, in reference to possible terrorist attacks, “the threat level has gone up enormously.”

And this week, German officials suggested the country could see a Moscow-style incident in the coming months, namely as Germany is scheduled to hold Euro 2024 soccer matches.

“Europe, and with it Germany, are in the crosshairs of jihadist organizations, in particular ISIS and ISIS-K,” German interior minister Nancy Faeser told the Financial Times.

Source link