Photo: US Air Force The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it had killed an Islamic State leader in Syria in a drone strike. The US Central Command said in a press release that Maher al-Agal was killed on Tuesday and an unidentified senior Islamic State official was seriously wounded. The Pentagon says there were no civilian casualties, although that information could not be immediately confirmed. The US carried out the strike outside Jindari, a town in northwestern Syria near the Turkish border. Islamic State at its peak controlled more than 40,000 square miles stretching from Syria to Iraq and ruled over 8 million people. While the group’s territorial state collapsed in 2019, its leaders turned to guerrilla tactics and were able to “effectively restructure themselves organizationally,” according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonpartisan, Washington-based think tank. The strike on al-Agal comes months after the group’s leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, killed himself during a raid on his hideout by US special forces. The US said Al Qureshi was blown up along with members of his family.
