The American armed forces claimed on Sunday to have killed 37 “terrorists”, including members of Hurras al-Din, a group linked to ISIS and Al-Qaeda, in two separate strikes in Syria, according to a press release from the American Military Command for the Middle East (Centcom).
The first strike, on September 24, killed nine “terrorists”, including a senior leader of Hurras al-Din in northwest Syria, while a previous strike on September 16 against a training camp of the ISIS had killed 28 other “terrorists”, including at least four leaders, Centcom said.
These strikes against the command and fighters of IS and Hurras al-Din, a group linked to Al-Qaeda, demonstrate Centcom’s commitment to sustainably defeating terrorist organizations in the region, the leader said in the statement. of Centcom, General Erik Kurilla. Another Hurras al-Din leader, Abu Abdul Rahman al-Makki, was also killed by the United States at the end of August in Syria.
ISIS took control of entire swaths of Syria and Iraq from 2014, imposing a reign of terror before being defeated in 2019 by an international coalition led by the United States and aided by Syrian Kurdish forces. Since the group’s territorial defeat, jihadists have retreated into the vast Syrian desert and continue to carry out deadly attacks, mainly targeting the army and Kurdish-dominated forces.
The United States has around 2,500 troops in Iraq and nearly 900 in Syria, as part of the international coalition created in 2014 to fight the jihadist group IS. At the end of August, the US military and Iraqi security forces killed 15 IS fighters during a large-scale operation in Iraq.
This international coalition will end within a year in Iraq, Washington and Baghdad announced on Friday, but will continue its mission in Syria.
