United States reasonably certain Jihadi John killed in Syria

Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, was “evaporated” by a Hellfire missile fired from a US Reaper drone after British intelligence analysts located him in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) headquarters of Raqqa.

The Pentagon has confirmed the air strike but said it would not formally announce the result until it had been fully assessed.

It comes after meticulous planning by both U.S. and British forces.

Emwazi, who speaks English and is believed to be born in Kuwait, was frequently seen in hooded hostage videos carrying out violent beheadings. His parents moved to Britain in 1993 after their hopes of obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship were quashed.

The families of hostages who were killed in Syria were contacted about the strike before reports of it were made public, Earnest said.

Emwazi is believed to have personally beheaded at least eight hostages and tortured many more. He was publicly identified months after he appeared in a video about the killing of ISIS hostage James Foley, a USA journalist.

He says the operation was “consistent” with other operations aimed at top Islamic State leaders.

Haines, whose husband was killed last September, adds Emwazi’s possible death “means very little because David is not here with us and there is no way to bring him back'”. Describing Emwazi as a “barbaric murderer” and Islamic State’s “lead executioner”, he said: “It was the right thing to do”. He was dubbed Jihadi John by the British press because he was one of four British terrorists whom their prisoners named “the Beatles”.

“After seeing the news that “Jihadi John” was killed I felt an instant sense of relief, knowing he wouldn’t appear in any more horrific videos”, Bethany Haines, Haines’ teenage daughter, told ITV News. “But Jihadi John was not a tactical figure in ISIL”, he said. “I try not to think about them”, she said of Islamic State militants.

“If we’re going to make any sort of progress on winning this global war against Jihadism, we’ve got to focus on the ideology and win the battle of ideas, not just have a look at their propaganda tools and their frontmen and their symbols”.

Peter Neumann, director of the worldwide Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London, said the military impact would be small even if the symbolic importance was significant.

“It feeds into a wider narrative that ISIS (Islamic State) in its core territory isn’t really winning anymore”, he said.