US air strike targets ISIL fighter ‘Jihadi John’

Pentagon says it carried out an attack in Syria to kill the fighter made infamous by gruesome hostage-beheading videos.

‘Jihadi John’ is the ISIL fighter in the videos showing the beheadings of hostages [Associated Press]

The US military launched an air strike in Syria targeting ISIL fighter Mohammed Emwazi – better known as “Jihadi John” – who participated in the beheading videos of two American journalists and the killing of several other captives.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the air strike carried out on Thursday in Raqqa targeted Emwazi, a British citizen.

Cook said it was unclear whether Jihadi John was killed.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press a drone targeted a vehicle believed to be carrying Emwazi.

British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday called the attack “self-defence”, saying Emwazi was a “barbaric murderer”.

“We cannot yet be certain if the strike was successful,” Cameron said. “It was the right thing to do… Britain and our allies will not rest
until we have defeated this evil terrorist death cult.”

Jihadi John is in the ISIL videos showing the killings of journalists Steven Sotloff andJames Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages.

Emwazi, a computer programmer from London, was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin. His parents moved to Britain in 1993 after their hopes of obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship were quashed.