News / Military

US drone strike kills senior ISIL leader: Pentagon

Friday, 03 July 2015 2:38 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 04 July 2015 11:32 AM ]

A senior Pentagon official said on Thursday that Tariq bin Tahar al-'Awni al-Harzi was killed by a US drone strike last month.

The US military says it has taken out a senior ISIL leader, who has been in charge of moving militants and weapons from Libya to Syria.

A senior Pentagon official said on Thursday that Tariq bin Tahar al-'Awni al-Harzi and another militant were killed by a US drone strike last month.

The official also claimed that there were no civilian casualties in the operation. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the operation publicly.

Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement on Thursday that al-Harzi,33 , was killed on June 16 in Shaddadi, Syria.

He said that al-Harzi, known as the "emir of suicide bombers", used to coordinate suicide bombing attacks in Iraq.

Last year, the US State Department offered a $3 million reward for information on al-Harzi, after he was put on the US Designated Terrorist List.

Davis said al-Harzi’s killing will damage the ISIL’s ability to move foreign terrorists in and out of the Middle East region.

"His death will impact ISIL's ability to integrate foreign terrorist fighters into the Syrian and Iraqi fight as well as to move people and equipment across the border between Syria and Iraq," he said.

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Iraq and Syria.

Since late September, the US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

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