Idlib: The White House on Thursday said US armed forces “have taken off the battlefield” Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, a leader of the so-called (IS) group.
The pentagon earlier announced that the counterterrorism operation in Idlib, northwestern Syria, was “successful.”
First responders and activists said the raid killed 13 people, including children.
It came after a series of attacks by the terrorist group in the in region recent weeks.
“There were no US casualties. More information will be provided as it becomes available,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement early Thursday.
The Britain-based monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said US helicopters landed in a village where the US-led coalition troops attacked a house and clashed with fighters in rebel-held Idlib.
Local residents described the raid as the biggest since the 2019 operation that killed IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
US forces reportedly used loudspeakers to ask women and children to leave the area.
According to an unnamed US official quoted by the AP news agency, one of the US helicopters suffered a mechanical problem during the raid and had to be blown up on the ground. The New York Times also reported the incident.
Blood covers the floor of a destroyed house after an operation by the US military in the Syrian village of Atmeh in Idlib
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told the AFP news agency that “13 people at least were killed, among them four children and three women, during the operation.”
The Observatory had earlier put the death toll at nine.
The Syrian Civil Defense, volunteer first responders also known as the White Helmets, also reported that at least 13 people were killed, including six children.
In recent months, US special forces have carried out several operations against jihadist targets in and around Idlib.
The region, mostly administered by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group of former members of al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria, is the last enclave to actively oppose the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Idlib is also home to camps for families displaced by the conflict of the past decade. Analysts warn that jihadists use the region as a place to hide among civilians.
