Has been targeted in the occupied city of Afrin… American forces announce the targeting of a senior ISIS official

On Wednesday, US Central Command said in a statement that it had targeted a senior official working in the ranks of ISIS inside Syria.

The statement stated that the operation was an air strike, carried out on the sixteenth of this June, which resulted in the killing of the organization’s official, “Osama Jamal Muhammad Ibrahim al-Janabi.”

Sources told Aso News Network that Al-Janabi was killed while he was in one of the settlements, built by settlers in Afrin, while the original local population had been displaced after the occupation of Afrin by Turkey in March 2018.

The Central Command statement confirmed that the killing of Al-Janabi would lead to “disrupting ISIS’s ability to provide resources and carry out terrorist attacks,” indicating that they, alongside allies in the region, would continue to carry out operations to ensure the organization’s permanent defeat.

While the American command did not specify where the ISIS official was targeted, the media official for the Syrian Democratic Forces Center, Farhad Shami, indicated on his official page that the raid targeted the leader in Afrin region. It was also reported that the targeting took place in a settlement called “Kuwait Al-Rahma.”

“Shami” said: “We congratulate our partners in the international coalition to fight ISIS on the killing of the terrorist Osama Muhammad Ibrahim al-Janabi during an air strike that targeted him while he was in the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin.”

The phenomenon of building settlements under the name of charitable residential complexes is widespread in occupied Afrin and its countryside, which raises fears that these operations fall within the framework of demographic change in Afrin, which Turkey seeks to bring about, according to reports from international organizations!

Abdul Rahman Mustafa, head of the Syrian Interim Government affiliated with the Syrian National Coalition, had indicated in a publication accusing the Syrian Democratic Forces of targeting a camp in Afrin, and that this led to the death of a civilian and caused harm to civilians, but it became clear through the US Central Command statement that the targeting was for one of ISIS leaders, and this is what the head of the Syrian interim government concealed.

Farhad Shami says that the areas occupied by Turkey are still a safe place for ISIS fighters and leaders.

It is not the first operation against ISIS leaders to take place in northwestern Syria and occupied areas such as Afrin and Serêkaniyê. The international coalition has previously targeted and arrested ISIS leaders in several operations, most notably the killing of the organization’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in October 2019, then Abu Ibrahim Al-Qurashi in February 2022, in Idlib Governorate.