United States air strike ‘kills Jihadi John’ in Syria

This image made from militant video, which has been verified by SITE Intel Group and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John”, holding a knife.

Jihadi John, the feared Islamic State executioner, may be possibly dead following a drone strike in Syria initiated by the United States forces on Thursday, according to BBC News.

This was a mission of “persistent surveillance”, a senior USA official said, adding that authorities knew it was him when they took the shot.

He said Britain had been working “hand in glove” round the clock with its closest ally, the USA, to track down and target the militant, who is believed to be responsible for the deaths of several IS hostages, including Britons Alan Henning and David Haines. “…This guy was a human animal, and killing him is probably making the world a little bit better place”.

“We are reasonably certain that we killed the target that we meant to kill, which is Jihadi John”, the Army spokesman said. “‘Jihadi John’ has been the voice and the face of ISIS’s depraved ideology, and his death would send the strong message that these barbaric acts will not go unanswered”.

“A vehicle carrying four foreign Islamic State leaders, including one British Jihadi was hit by U.S. air strikes right after the governorate building in Raqqa city”, Rami Abdulrahman, Director of the UK-based Observatory told Reuters.

In other news, Turkish authorities in Istanbul have also arrested Aine Lesley Davis, a 30 year-old jihadist who fled London last year to join ISIS in Syria.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the air strike in Raqqa, Syria, showed the United States is serious about using intelligence to apply pressure to Islamic State leadership and called the targeted militant, Mohammed Emwazi, “a target worth going after”. The release of the video, on August 19, 2014, horrified and outraged the civilized world but was followed the next month by videos showing the beheadings of Sotloff and Haines and, in October, of Henning. “We have killed on average one mid-to-upper level Isil [Isis] leader every two days since May”.

It was Emwazi, though, who became the lightning rod for condemnation of Islamic State’s brutality and news of the latest strike against a British jihadist dominated radio and television on Friday morning.

A Kuwaiti-born British citizen believed to be in his 20s, Emwazi has been described by a Spanish journalist who was a former hostage as a bloodthirsty psychopath who enjoyed threatening Western hostages. “I try not to think about them”, she said of Islamic State militants.

Friends of Emwazi said they believed he started down the road to radicalization when he traveled to the East African nation of Tanzania in 2009, The Washington Post reported this year. “Our son is never coming back”.

Emwazi’s identity was confirmed in February by US intelligence officials.

He later attended the University of Westminster and graduated with a degree in information systems with business management.