ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on Thursday that a suspected Islamic State (ISIS) official was killed in an airstrike carried out earlier this week in northwest Syria.
According to a CENTCOM statement, its forces “conducted a precision airstrike in Northwest Syria killing Rakhim Boev, a Syria-based ISIS official who was involved in planning external operations threatening U.S. citizens, our partners, and civilians.”
It noted that the attack, which was carried out on Tuesday, was part of its ongoing efforts to “disrupt and degrade efforts by terrorists to plan, organize, and conduct attacks against U.S. forces and our allies.”
The US army did not clarify whether the operation was coordinated with local authorities on the ground.
The airstrike comes amid an escalation of ISIS attacks in Syria, particularly targeting Kurdish-led forces and civilians in eastern Syria, with the militants seeking to exploit a security vacuum sparked by increased instability following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The US-allied, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on Wednesday the capture of two suspected member of ISIS in Raqqa province. The SDF has also carried out multiple anti-ISIS operations in recent weeks.
ISIS was territorially defeated in Syria in 2019, two years after its defeat in Iraq, but the group has recently sought to regain ground.
