U.S. military officials said Friday they were “reasonably certain” an airstrike in Syria targeting "Jihadi John" killed the masked British national seen in videos depicting the beheading of hostages held by ISIS. A U.S. military official, discussing the airstrike in Raqqa targeting the notorious jihadist, "we are 99 percent sure we got him." Col. Steve Warren said the U.S. military is “reasonably certain” that Mohammad Emwarzi, better known as “Jihadi John,” was killed in the U.S. drone strike Thursday night. In a Pentagon briefing Friday from Baghdad, Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, sought to downplay the airstrike calling it more a “blow to the prestige" of ISIS than a military victory. Warren called the strike “routine” and said similar strikes against mid-to high value ISIS leaders has occurred every two days since May. "This guy was a human animal and killing him is probably making the world a better place," he added. Warren said the driver of the vehicle carrying Jihadi John was also killed after being struck by a hellfire missile fired from the U.S. drone. The killing of Jihadi John comes as the U.S. military is stepping up airstrikes throughout Iraq and Syria. Warren said Operation Tidal Wave II, a U.S.-led bombing campaign targeting ISIS’s oil infrastructure in eastern Syria near the city of Dayr as Zawr has been underway in recent days to destroy oil infrastructure controlled by ISIS. ISIS receives two-thirds of its revenue from oil, according to Warren. “We wanted them broken longer,” said Warren when asked why the strikes did not occur earlier. Warren said strikes in the past year produced damage to infrastructure that was “easy to replace.” A senior military source said Emwazi was being tracked by the drone for most of the day Thursday while he met with other people. The source said the strike took place shortly after Emwazi came out of a building in Raqqa, when he was "ID'd and engaged." Sky News, citing sources inside Raqqa, reported that Emwazi was badly hurt in the air strike but still alive when he was brought to the hospital there. Later, however, the same sources said the hospital was sealed off to the public. Locals say the hospital is usually closed when an ISIS figure is killed, which allows the group to go on social media and claim he is still alive. A representative of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the Daily Telegraph, "a car carrying four foreign Islamic State leaders, including one British jihadi, was hit by U.S. air strikes near the governorate building in Raqqa city. "All the sources there are saying that the body of an important British jihadi is lying in the hospital of Raqqa," the activist added. "All the sources are saying it is of Jihadi John but I cannot confirm it personally." Emwazi, believed to be in his mid-20s, 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 seen in videos showing the beheading of journalists Steve Sotloff and James Foley, American aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages. A counterterror analyst siad that Emwazi became so sought-after following his appearances in the beheading videos that he was shunned by ISIS leadership. The analyst said Emwazi had become the "Typhoid Mary" of the terror group, noting that his presence had prompted airstrikes on meetings, buildings, and other commanders. British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday the drone action was "a strike at the heart" of ISIS, as well as "an act of self-defense" and the right thing to do. Cameron said Britain has been "working, with the United States, literally around the clock to track him down." A defector from ISIS, talked to Sky News earlier this year about how militants prepared captives for executions and how Emwazi, a 27-year-old British citizen who lived in London before joining ISIS, gave orders. The jihadist group reportedly staged mock executions to prepare hostages for being on camera, telling them in the rehearsals that they would not be harmed. "The execution rehearsals took place so that when the moment of death finally came, the hostages were not expecting to be killed and were relaxed to appeal for their release on camera." The hostage-beheading videos have become an important part of ISIS propaganda. The videos attract attention by the news media and are accessible to the world through YouTube and other video-hosting sites.

• published: 13 Nov 2015
• views: 39644