US coalition forces said they detained a senior Islamic State group bomb maker in a predawn operation on Thursday in rebel-held northwestern Syria. According to witnesses, troops in helicopters swooped down on an isolated house.
A war monitor and AFP correspondents said that two military helicopters touched down for a few minutes in a village in an area controlled by Turkish-backed rebel groups and that numerous shots were fired.
“The arrested individual is an experienced bomb builder and operational facilitator who rose to become one of the top leaders of Daesh’s Syrian branch,” the US-led coalition combating the jihadist organization in Syria and Iraq said, using an alternate term for IS.
A coalition officer identified the seized individual as Hani Ahmed Al-Kurdi, who was the leader of IS in Raqa when it was the de facto capital of the terrorist organization in Syria.
In areas of northwestern Syria under the control of Turkish-backed rebels and non-IS factions, such US operations are uncommon.
Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, the group’s head, detonated a suicide vest in an attempt to evade capture during an earlier special forces assault in early February.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitoring organization with a huge network of on-the-ground sources, was unable to confirm the identity of the detained IS member on Thursday.
Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Observatory, reported that two military helicopters landed in Al-Humayrah and departed seven minutes later, adding that only a few bullets were fired. “The US operation was swift and efficient,” he added, adding that it took occurred northeast of Aleppo and four kilometers from the Turkish border in the village of Al-Humayrah.
The coalition asserted that “the mission was precisely designed to minimize the possibility of collateral damage, especially to civilians.”
Mohamed Youssef, a local witness to the raid, reported that there were no civilian casualties or damage to coalition aircraft or assets. According to him, the raid targeted a residence on the village’s outskirts where displaced individuals from the Syrian city of Aleppo were residing.
