“This strike will degrade ISIS’s capability to destabilize the area and strike at our forces and companions,” Military Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, stated in a press release asserting the raid and al-Umawi’s loss of life. “Our forces stay within the area to make sure the enduring defeat of ISIS.”
The operation in opposition to al-Umawi adopted a Wednesday evening helicopter raid in northeastern Syria, close to the village of Qamishli, that focused and killed Rakkan Wahid al-Shammri, in addition to one different affiliate. Al-Shammri was an ISIS smuggler identified to usher in weapons, fighters and cash to help the terrorist group, who had additionally beheaded two members of the Syrian Protection Forces, in keeping with an individual accustomed to the operation who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate the particulars of the raid and its goal.
The raids are the most recent in current operations geared toward killing influential ISIS figures. Over the summer season, U.S. army forces killed Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi, a senior ISIS bombmaker often called the “Wali of Raqqa.” That adopted the killing of al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, ISIS’s chief on the time, who’s believed to have rigged his hideout in Atma, Syria, with explosives that have been detonated when the construction was raided.
The Qurayshi operation turned mired in a higher controversy about whether or not the U.S. army had taken sufficient steps to make sure the protection of civilians after UNICEF and native witnesses counted at the very least 5 kids useless. Within the aftermath of that strike, U.S. forces have been cautious to level out that profitable raids in opposition to ISIS targets haven’t resulted in civilian harm or loss of life.
U.S. Central Command’s Thursday bulletins about the latest ISIS raids diversified barely, nonetheless, within the certainty with which they proclaimed the operations had prevented inflicting civilian hurt.
“No U.S. forces have been injured or killed in the course of the operation, no civilians have been killed or wounded, and there was no loss or injury to U.S. tools,” the information launch asserting the al-Shammri killing said.
Whereas the information launch asserting the loss of life of al-Umawi said with comparable confidence that there had been no accidents amongst U.S. forces and no injury to U.S. tools, the standing report on civilians was barely much less assured.
“Preliminary assessments point out no civilians have been killed or wounded throughout this operation,” that announcement said.