US targets ISIS rocket expert in drone strike

A US drone is believed to have killed Jasim Khadijah, a former Iraqi officer and latterly ISIS rocket expert. Khadijah is thought to have been responsible for a deadly attack on US troops in northern Iraq in March. US troops providing force protection fire to the Iraqi army, were attacked near the town of Makhmour (between Mosul and Kirkuk) last month, during which a marine was killed and eight other soldiers injured. Khadijah was not regarded as a particularly high-worth target, underlining the retaliatory nature of the drone strike.

The anti-Islamic State coalition conducting airstrikes in Iraq and Syria has killed the Isis extremist believed responsible for an attack by militants on US troops in northern Iraq last month that left a marine dead, it said on Sunday.

Jasim Khadijah, a former Iraqi officer not considered a high-value target, was killed by a drone strike overnight in northern Iraq, coalition spokesman US army colonel Steve Warren told reporters in Baghdad.

“We have information [that] he was a rocket expert, he controlled these attacks,” said Warren, referring to the shelling of a base used by US troops near the town of Makhmour, located between Mosul and Kirkuk.

That attack killed marine staff sergeant Louis Cardin and wounded eight others, all part of a company sized detachment of less than 200 troops that provides force protection fire to Iraqi army troops, who are making slow progress in a campaign to clear areas around Mosul, an Isis stronghold.

Cardin’s was the second combat death of an American service member in Iraq since the start of the campaign to fight the militant group in 2014.

Warren said five other Islamic State fighters were killed in the airstrike.

In Syria, meanwhile, Syrian and allied forces backed by Russian air strikes drove Isis militants out of the town of al-Qaryatain on Sunday, Syria’s military command said.



Surrounded by hills, al-Qaryatain is 60 miles west of the ancient city of Palmyra, which government forces recaptured last Sunday.