Alex Grynkewich, commander of US Air Forces Central, said in the release that Russian aircraft “flew 18 unprofessional close passes that caused the MQ-9s to react to avoid unsafe situations. The incident Friday between the Russian fighter jets and the US drones lasted for nearly two hours, a US Air Forces Central release said. US drones participating in the anti-ISIS mission in Syria were harassed three times in as many days last week by Russian aircraft that are in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad. “ISIS remains a threat, not only to the region but well beyond.”ĬENTCOM said no civilians were killed in the strike but it is assessing reports of civilian injury. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of CENTCOM, said in the release. “We have made it clear that we remain committed to the defeat of ISIS throughout the region,” Gen. The strike, carried out by the same MQ-9 Reaper drones that were harassed by Russian aircraft earlier that day, killed Usama al-Muhajir, according to a press release. US assigned several MQ-9 Reapers to surveil an area of interest connected to ISIS, and identified a white Corolla in the area. “The government insisted that, unlike CIA drones, they were never used for targeted assassinations in territories where we were not militarily engaged.The US military killed an ISIS leader on Friday in a drone strike in eastern Syria, the US Central Command announced Sunday. “Drones were used for lethal strikes in Afghanistan but only where UK or Nato forces were threatened by fighters on the ground,” Clarke said. “The point is not so much that this man was British but that he was targeted in an area that the UK does not currently regard, legally, as an operational theatre of war for UK forces. Presumably, Reyaad Khan, who had been operating in Syria since November 2013, was the intended target. The prime minister’s statement spoke of the ‘meticulous planning’ for a ‘precision airstrike’. He went on: “Secondly, this drone strike is the first to have been conducted, apparently, as a targeted assassination. Michael Clarke, director-general of London’s Royal United Services Institute, said: “This announcement by the prime minister is a big departure in a number of ways.” Firstly he said that Cameron in October last year had pledged that there would be no military operations conducted in Syria. He said: “This was the deliberate killing of a British citizen. Earlier this year, there was the revelation that RAF crews embedded with the US were taking part in air strikes.Īccording to Chris Cole, the head of the campaign group Drone Wars, in May, RAF drones flew 40% of their missions over Syria. Having no parliamentary authority to expand airstrikes to Syria, the UK was initially restricted to surveillance flights over the country. The political argument is over mission creep. As a further elaboration, the argument runs that it is near impossible to arrest him in the Syrian battlefield and he is not likely to return voluntarily to the UK: killing him was the only option. Cameron’s argument to counter these questions is that Khan was promoting attacks in the UK so the act was in self-defence. The UK has no such constitution protecting individual citizens. Barack Obama has since faced repeated questions about the constitutionality of such killings, with accusations that the US is engaged in extrajudicial assassinations. He was killed by a US Hellfire missile fired by a drone controlled by the CIA. The US has been carrying out drone attacks against its own citizens for more than a decade, the most controversial target of which was Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida preacher, in Yemen in 2011. A third victim killed in the attack was also a member of Isis but was not British. The attack was not aimed at Amin: it was just his misfortune he was in the vehicle with him. It was against a particular individual: Khan. These have mainly been against Isis collectively, such as suspected vehicles or groups attacking the Iraqi army or Iraqi Kurdish forces in the north. The RAF has been carrying out drone strikes against targets in Iraq as part of an international coalition against Isis. The RAF was acting on intelligence that required a quick response, according to security sources. The Ministry of Defence never confirms the location. The attack that killed Britons Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin in a vehicle near Raqqa on 21 August was carried out by a Reaper drone flown from a base in the Middle East but controlled by a British crew either operating at RAF Waddington or from the US air base at Creech in Nevada. David Cameron announces on Monday that the British government authorised an airstrike in Syria that killed two Britons fighting with Islamic State. military launched a drone strike that it said targeted ISIS-K militants in Nangarhar Province, east of Kabul, killing two of the groups planners and wounding a third.
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