A leader of the Islamic State group, identified as Bilal al-Sudani, and “about ten people” linked to the terrorist organization were killed in a US raid in Somalia on Wednesday, the US executive branch said on Thursday.
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“Al-Sudani has been responsible for promoting the Islamic State group’s growing presence in Africa and funding its operations around the world, including in Afghanistan,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement.
A senior White House official said in an interview with journalists that this operation, which had been prepared for “several months,” resulted in no casualties either among the civilian population or among American soldiers.
The senior official, who asked not to be named, said the raid was preceded by “intensive rehearsals” by US forces at sites “specially constructed” to mimic the terrain where it took place, a cave in the mountains of northern Somalia .
“We were ready to capture al-Sudani,” she said.
Joe “Biden has made it very clear that we are committed to finding and eliminating all terrorist threats against the United States and against the American people, wherever they are, even in the most remote of locations,” claimed another official at the White House.
Last August, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed on his balcony in Afghanistan by a US drone strike.