U.S. Special Forces kill senior ISIS figure in Syria


16-05-2015 10:14 PM

Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - U.S Special Forces have carried out a raid inside Syria that killed a man identified as a senior Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader who helped direct the group’s oil, gas and financial operations, U.S. officials said on Saturday.

The ISIS militant, Abu Sayyaf, “was killed during the course of the operation when he engaged U.S. forces,” in eastern Syria, Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said Friday in a statement.

Abu Sayyaf’s wife was also captured and is in a U.S. military detention in Iraq after what has become the first publicly declared Special Forces operation by U.S. forces in Syria since their failed attempt to rescue American journalist James Foley and other American hostages held by ISIS last summer. Foley was killed by the ultra-radical group, an offshoot of al-Qaeda.

The White House said President Barack Obama ordered the raid that killed the man.

Meanwhile, a group tracking the Syrian civil war said a report on Syrian state TV claiming the army had killed an ISIS official had incorrectly taken credit for a raid carried out by U.S. forces.

Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the reported raid on an oil field in the eastern Deir al-Zor province was the same one which U.S. officials said was carried out by the American special operations forces.

Syrian state TV had carried news of the raid before it was announced in the United States, quoting its Deir al-Zor correspondent.

On Saturday, a U.S. official also said that Abu Sayyaf was Tunisian, and Washington informed the Tunisian government of the operation after it was carried out.

*Al Arabiya




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