The United States carried out a drone strike against ‘Jehadi John’, the knife-wielding masked executioner of ISIS, in Syria on Thursday, setting off intense speculation that the British national may have been killed in the operation.
While US Secretary of State John Kerry and British Prime Minister David Cameron cautiously stated on Friday that the outcome of the strike was still unknown, ABC News cited an unnamed US official as exuding confidence that the man may have perished in the “flawless” operation.
“He (Mohammed Emwazi aka ‘Jehadi John’) walked out of a building and got in the car. We struck it right after with zero collateral damage. The vehicle was on fire. It was a 100 per cent flawless, direct hit,” ABC News quoted the US counter-terrorism official as saying, remarking, “Jehadi John essentially ‘evaporated’ in the explosion.”
Earlier, the Pentagon confirmed the targeting of the British national in the air strike carried out in Raqqa, Syria, but said it is still “assessing the results” of the operation.
Calling Emwazi “a barbaric murderer” who posed a serious threat to innocent civilians, Cameron said in london that if the US strike was really successful, it would be “a strike at the heart” of ISIS.
“I have always said that we would do whatever was necessary, whatever it took, to track down Emwazi and stop him taking the lives of others,” he said.
Emwazi, who spoke with a clear British accent in videos, carried out the brutal killing of three American hostages, two British and a Japanese. He first came into prominence in August 2014, when ISIS released a video in which American journalist James Foley was shown reading a statement criticising President Obama and the American military operation against the Islamic State in Iraq. Foley was then beheaded. Two weeks later, another ISIS video showed another US journalist, Steven J Sotloff, being executed by the masked man in similar fashion.