A regional IS leader was killed during a US special operation in Somalia.
IS commander Bilal al-Sudani was among the victims of a US attack in northern Somalia on Thursday. Ten other people were reportedly killed in the attack, writes the Reuters news agency.
Bilal al-Sudani has been designated by the United States as regional representative ICEICEAccording to Store Norske Leksikon, the Islamic State (IS) is an extremist jihadist organization that for some time ruled parts of Iraq and Syria, and has branches in several countries. – leader in Somalia. He was killed in a remote mountainous region in the north of the country.
– On January 25, on the orders of the President, the American army carried out an operation in northern Somalia which resulted in the death of several members of the IS, including Bilal-al-Sudani, indicates the secretary American Defense Lloyd Austin in a press release reproduced Thursday by among others CNN.
Additionally, Austin claims that Bilal al-Sudani has been a key figure in ISIS’s expansion into Africa and funding its international operations, including operations in Afghanistan.
United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) signs Twitter that no civilians were injured or killed in the operation, which they describe as successful.
No American soldiers were injured either, writes The New York Times.
A statement from the White House is expected later Thursday.
Last October, the United States killed two other IS leaders in an airstrike in Syria. Earlier that year they killed ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, also in Syria.
Jo Jakobsen, a professor at NTNU and an expert in international politics, then estimated that the importance of the murder was less than one would think.
Indeed, the IS leader was far less well known than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the IS leader who was killed in a US operation in 2019.
