BEIRUT – The U.S.-led coalition has targeted a senior member of the Islamic State group involved in the 2014 killing of American aid worker Peter Kassig, a military spokesman said Monday.
Col. Sean Ryan, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS, told The Associated Press that coalition forces conducted precision strikes against Abu al-Umarayn and several other IS members. He said the strikes, which took place on Sunday, occurred in a desert area in southeastern Syria.
The area is close to where Syria’s state news agency said the U.S.-led coalition fired several missiles at Syrian army positions in the country’s east, causing material damage. The SANA report said positions targeted on Sunday night are in the Ghorab Mountains, south of the eastern town of Sukhna.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group, said U.S. troops in the Tanf base near the Jordanian and Iraqi border fired 15 rockets at a Syrian military convoy that lost its way in the area. It gave no further details.
However, Mozahem al-Salloum, from the activist-run Hammurabi Justice News network that tracks developments in eastern Syria, denied reports that U.S. troops targeted Syrian army positions. The targets were only IS elements, al-Salloum added.  (Fox News)