US says air strike killed senior Islamic State leader in Syria
A US airstrike killed a senior Islamic State group leader in northwest Syria last week, the US military announced on Wednesday.
The June 19 strike "killed Ali Husayn al-Ulaywi and is part of ongoing US efforts to disrupt and eliminate terrorists seeking to attack Americans abroad or the US homeland," the US military's Central Command said in a statement.
The United States intervened in Syria more than a decade ago to aid local Kurdish-majority forces battling the Islamic State (IS) group, which had taken over swathes of Syria and Iraq in a lightning offensive.
The US-led international coalition against IS has since drawn down after the militant group was pushed out of the territory it seized, with US and Syrian authorities saying in April that Syria had taken control of all major bases in the country.