A US drone strike targeted a vehicle in Syria believed to be transporting the masked Islamic State militant known as ‘Jihadi John’ on Thursday, according to US officials.
Whether the strike killed the British-accented, masked man who appears in several videos depicting the beheadings of Western hostages was not fully known, officials said.
However a senior US military official told Fox News, “we are 99 per cent sure we got him.”
Another official told USA’s ABC News that he had “evaporated” in a “flawless” and “clean hit”.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook would not specify whether the man dubbed ‘Jihadi John’, Mohammed Emwazi, had been killed, saying in a statement that “we are assessing the results of tonight’s operation and will provide additional information as and where appropriate”.
The Pentagon said the air strike took place in Raqa.
“Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the murders of US journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages,” the Pentagon said.
A US official said that a drone had targeted a vehicle in which Emwazi was believed to be traveling. The official was not authorised to speak publicly and requested anonymity.
Word of the US action comes as Iraqi Kurdish forces backed by US-led air strikes blocked a key Islamic State group supply line with Syria in the battle to retake the town of Sinjar from the jihadists.
A permanent cut in the supply line would hamper IS’s ability to move fighters and supplies between northern Iraq and Syria, where the jihadists hold significant territory and have declared a “caliphate.”
Emwazi has been described by a former hostage as a bloodthirsty psychopath who enjoyed threatening Western hostages. Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, who had been held in Syria for more than six months after his abduction in September 2013, said Emwazi would explain precisely how the militants would carry out a beheading.
Emwazi is one of a number of English-speaking terrorists nicknamed ‘the Beatles’ because of their British accents.
An official said another terrorist from this group could have also been targeted in the strike.
Emwazi first came to the world’s attention when he brutally beheaded western hostages in a sickening series of snuff films.
LITTLE COMFORT TO GRIEVING FAMILIES
The mother of one of his victims, Steven Sotloff, told NBC News she hadn’t been informed about the airstrike but that the death of Emwazi would not give her any closure.
“If they got him great,” Shirley Sotloff said, before adding that it still “doesn’t bring my son back.”
The bereaved mother of James Foley shared similar sentiments, telling ABC Newshis death was of “really a small solace to us.”
“This huge effort to go after the this deranged man filled with hate when they can’t make half that effort to save the hostages while these young Americans were still alive,” said Diane Foley, who was been critical of the U.S. government’s hostage policy.
THE BRUTAL RISE OF ‘JIHADI JOHN’
Emwazi first appeared in a video in August of 2014 showing the beheading of Foley, a 40-year-old freelance journalist who had been missing since he was seized in Syria in November 2012.
Video of the beheading, titled “A Message to America”, sparked worldwide revulsion.
In it, IS declares that Foley was killed because President Barack Obama ordered air strikes against the group in northern Iraq.
Foley is seen kneeling on the ground, dressed in an orange outfit that resembles those worn by prisoners held at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
Two weeks later, his fellow US hostage Sotloff was killed in the same manner, again on camera and by the same British-accented executioner.
IS later said it had executed Peter Kassig, a 26-year-old US aid worker kidnapped in Syria in October 2013, as a warning to Washington.
Emwazi was also believed to be involved in the killings of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.
After ’Jihadi John’ was unmaked and identified in February, he no longer appeared in IS videos.
Emwazi was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin. His parents moved to Britain in 1993 after their hopes of obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship were quashed. He went on to work in London as a computer programmer.
He left for Syria in 2013 but had been known to security services and had previously been detained but released without charge dating as far back as 2009.
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