The US military announced on Friday that it had killed a senior official of the Islamic State jihadist group in a raid in Syria, adding that four soldiers were wounded in the operation on Thursday night, AFP reported.

“The target, senior IS leader Hamza al-Homsi, has been killed,” the US Middle East Command (Centcom) said in a statement.

Four soldiers injured in an explosion during an attack in northeastern Syria are being treated in Iraq. A dog that took part in the operation was also injured, the report says.

Later, Centcom spokesman Col. Joe Buccino said the blast was caused by al-Homsi, who “led a deadly terrorist network in eastern Syria before he was killed in the raid.”

Four wounded servicemen and a dog are in stable condition, he added.

After the territorial defeat of the Islamic State in Syria in 2019, several hundred US troops stationed in northeastern Syria as part of an anti-jihadist coalition continued to fight alongside the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and attack suspected members of terrorism. group.

On February 10, another FDS operation led to the seizure of weapons and the death of another IS leader.

In 2022, two more leaders of the group were killed: one in February by US special forces in the northwest of the country, and another in October by former rebels in the regime-backed southern province of Deraa.

In October 2019, the United States announced the death of the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, during an American operation in northwestern Syria.