ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - US-led coalition forces killed a senior Iraqi Islamic State (ISIS) leader on Wednesday during an airdrop raid in northwestern Syria’s Idlib province, state media said.
“International coalition forces executed an airdrop operation targeting a house in the town of Atmeh in northern Idlib countryside, resulting in the death of the house's tenant, who was one of the ISIS organization's leaders,” state television al-Ikhbariya said, citing an unnamed source.
It identified the target as Salah Numan, an Iraqi ISIS leader responsible for “coordinating and organizing a number of cells affiliated with the organization inside Syrian territory.”
Three witnesses told AFP the raid took place around midnight, reporting they heard aircraft and gunfire. Numan tried to escape by jumping from a balcony but was killed as coalition forces opened fire.
The state TV source said Numan’s wives, who were hiding with him, were interrogated, and electronic devices were seized. The building was owned by Mustafa al-Sheikh. His son, Ahmed Mustafa al-Sheikh, along with Muhannad and Mohammed al-Sheikh, were also questioned after being “forced to remove their clothes,” according to the source.
An Iraqi security source told AFP that Numan was the brother of a senior ISIS commander killed in a 2020 coalition strike in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor province. Iraqi intelligence helped guide Wednesday’s operation, the source added.
The US-led coalition has carried out numerous raids in Idlib against ISIS operatives. ISIS emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was killed in Atmeh in 2022 in an operation also conducted with Iraqi intelligence support.
ISIS rose to power and seized swathes of Iraqi and Syrian land in 2014, declaring a so-called “caliphate.”
But the group was declared territorially defeated in Syria in 2019, two years after its defeat in Iraq. Despite its military defeat, it continues to pose security risks, particularly in the vast eastern desert.
Last month, a Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spokesperson told Rudaw that an estimated 2,000 ISIS militants remain active in the Syrian desert.
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