Iraqi air strike ‘kills senior members of Isil’

IRAQ has killed 45 jihadists from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), including senior members, in an air strike in eastern Syria, it said yesterday.

Iraqi F-16 fighter jets carried out a “successful strike targeting a meeting of Daesh (Isil) leaders” on Friday in the Hajin region, in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzor, a military statement said.

Among those killed, it said, were a senior member of the jihadists’ “ministry of war”, his deputy, a local commander and a media official. There was no independent confirmation.

Three houses linked by an underground tunnel were also destroyed, it said, adding the strike was carried out based on “intelligence” at the request of prime minister Haider al-Abadi.

Hajin, about 30 miles from Iraq’s border, is the largest populated hub still under Isil control in Syria. Last month, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which monitors the Syrian war, said that at least 65 senior Isil members lived in Hajin. The town has been surrounded since the end of last year by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, the monitor says.

Iraq’s air force has carried out several strikes on Isil-held territory in Syria since April, including one targeting “the headquarters of (Isil’s) terror- ist gang leaders” in Hajin on May 24. Isil declared a cross-border “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq in 2014, seizing a third of Iraq during a sweeping offensive.

The jihadists have since lost much ground to separate counter-offensives by Syrian and Iraqi forces, as well as US-led operations, and the jihadist presence has been confined to a few holdouts in Deir Ezzor.

In December, the Iraqi government declared victory over Isil but the military has continued regular operations targeting mostly desert areas along the porous Syrian border.

Meanwhile, Syrian regime forces yesterday made their first gains on the ground against rebel fighters in the southern province of Daraa after several days of intensified bombardment, the SOHR reported. Since Tuesday, regime troops have been ramping up shelling on opposition-held areas in Daraa’s eastern countryside.