Hamza al-Homsi, a member of the IS leadership, was killed on Thursday in a helicopter attack carried out by US forces in conjunction with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Pentagon said. During the operation, four US soldiers and a military dog were injured by an explosion. They are currently being treated in a hospital in Iraq.
Since the territorial defeat of IS in 2019, hundreds of US troops have been deployed to northeastern Syria as part of the anti-jihadist coalition. In 2022, two more leaders of the group were killed, one in February by US special forces in the northwest and the other in October by regime-backed former rebels in southern Deraa province. In October 2019, the US announced that IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had died in a US operation in northwestern Syria.