The United States military announced on Friday that a high-ranking leader of the militant organization Islamic State was eliminated during a raid conducted by US-led forces in northwest Syria.
In a statement, the US Central Command confirmed the death of IS commander Dhiya Zawba Muslih al-Hardan along with his two adult sons, who were also affiliated with the group, during a raid in the Aleppo region of the Syrian town of al-Bab early on Friday.
While three women and three children present at the site were unharmed, the men were deemed to pose a threat to US and Coalition Forces, as well as the newly established Syrian Government, according to the statement.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring organization based in the UK, reported that the raid was executed via an airdrop of forces, marking the first operation of its kind conducted by the US-led coalition against IS this year. It also noted that ground forces from both the Syrian government’s General Security forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces were involved.
The observatory indicated that the operation was preceded by a stringent security cordon around the targeted area, a significant deployment of forces on the ground, and the presence of coalition helicopters in the airspace above the region.
There has been no official comment from either the government in Damascus or the SDF regarding the operation.
Washington has been fostering increasingly close relations with the new Syrian government in Damascus following the ousting of former President Bashar Assad during a rapid rebel offensive last year. The US has been advocating for a merger of forces between the new Syrian army and the Kurdish-led SDF, which controls a substantial portion of the country’s northeast.
Nevertheless, progress in reaching an agreement on the specifics of the merger has been sluggish and may be further hindered by the recent surge of sectarian violence in the southern province of Sweida, where government forces have allied with Sunni Muslim Bedouin clans to combat armed factions from the Druze religious minority.
It has been reported that certain government forces executed Druze civilians and set their homes ablaze while looting them. This violence has heightened the apprehension of other minority groups, such as the Kurds, towards the city of Damascus.
