ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A suspected leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) was killed on Monday in an airdrop operation carried out by the US-led coalition in eastern Syria, a war monitor reported.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) confirmed on Monday that ISIS leader Mohammed Atiyah, known as Abu Mahmoud, was killed after he clashed with the SDF and the global coalition forces during a joint security operation in the al-Jurzy town in Deir ez-Zor.
The operation was carried out in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province on a house where the leader lived, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based war monitor. He held Iraqi nationality.
“The commander showed resistance when coalition forces tried to arrest him, which led to an exchange of fire and his death,” SOHR said.
ISIS rose to power in 2014, seizing vast swathes of Syrian and Iraqi land in a brazen offensive and declaring a so-called “caliphate.”
While the group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017 and Syria in 2019, it still continues to pose serious security risks through hit-and-run attacks, bombings, and abductions, especially across expanses of the Syrian desert as well as several Iraqi provinces where there are security vacuums.
In late December, the SDF announced that over 350 ISIS members were arrested in areas they control in Syria in 2023.
A civil war broke out in Syria in 2011 after the government’s brutal crackdown on protests, and the security situation has remained fragile ever since.
The conflict then erupted into multiple fronts with the emergence of ISIS, constant fighting between Kurdish forces and Turkey and Turkish-backed proxies, Israeli strikes on pro-Iran factions and tit-for-tat attacks between the US and Iran. Russia has also backed the Syrian government, while about a thousand US troops are stationed in Syria to train and assist in the fight against ISIS.
