“If this strike was successful, and we still await confirmation of that, it will be a strike at the heart of ISIL“, Cameron said.
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While the Pentagon declared itself “reasonably certain” that the Thursday attack near Raqqa, Syria, had killed the 27-year-old one-time Londoner, the White House hedged its bets. Turkish officials said that Davis has always been regarded one of Emwazi closest collaborators, adding that they were “99 percent certain” that the person in custody was indeed Davis. Warren says that effort is continuing.
Emwazi, who was shown in videos beheading several Western hostages, came to symbolize the Islamic State’s brutality and was seen as a potential recruiting tool in the English-speaking world. Previously, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Jihadi John a “coward behind a mask”. Officials from both the US and Britain said they do not know if the man was killed or not during the airstrike.
“Jihadi John” was the intended target of the strike.
A British jihadist who killed the American Jewish journalist Steven Sotloff and other Westerners in Syria is said to have been killed in a U.S. Airforce strike. ISIS militants then ringed the auto and two others than had been destroyed in the Hellfire strike to prevent any photos or videos, the group said.
He was publicly identified months after he appeared in a video about the killing of ISIS hostage James Foley, a USA journalist.
Emwazi was born in Kuwait, but his family moved to London when he was six years old and he grew up in North Kensington, a leafy, middle-class area where a network of Islamist extremists has since been uncovered. “It was a 100 per cent flawless, direct hit”, ABC News quoted the U.S. counter-terrorism official as saying, remarking, “Jehadi John essentially “evaporated” in the explosion”.
“His death does not bring Jim back”, said the couple, whose son was captured in Syria in 2012 and beheaded in August 2014.
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“More importantly, today, we remember Steven’s remarkable life, his contributions and those of James Foley, Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig, Kayla Mueller, David Haines, Alan Henning, Kenji Goto and everyone else who has suffered at the hands of ISIS”.
