A US drone strike near the Syrian town of Raqqa may have killed Mohammed Emwazi, the notorious Islamic State (IS) militant and British national better known as "Jihadi John."
In July 2015, the US-led Coalition against IS said its air strikes had killed 15,000 IS militants in total. Britain reportedly has a "kill list" of around five terrorists, which Emwazi reportedly tops. As Pentagon officials race to confirm the death, we look at five key IS militants targeted by western strikes since bombing campaigns began on 15th June 2014.
Reyaad Khan
The drone strike which killed this 21-year-old IS fighter stands out because it was carried out by British forces in Syria despite a lack of parliamentary approval for military action in the country. The British government said that Khan had been planning "barbaric" terrorist attacks on UK soil. Announcing the action to parliament weeks later, David Cameron said that the strike was legally and morally justified because of Khan's alleged plot, which meant that killing him was an act of "self defence." Cameron will likely face questions on this from parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in the coming weeks. The strike, which targeted Khan, also killed another British national, 26-year-old Ruhul Amin.
Junaid Hussain
A British national like Emwazi, Amin and Khan, 21-year-old Hussain was killed in an air strike—reportedly delivered by a drone—on 24th August this year. US security sources were keen at the time to portray him as a "very dangerous" hacker with "significant technical skills," and he was believed to have been involved in a hacking of the US agency CENTCOM's website. He was also involved in online recruitment and propaganda. While living in Britain he was part of a hacking group called "Team Poison," and in 2012 spent time in prison after accessing Tony Blair's address book and publishing information from it.
Fadhil Ahmad al Hayali
This high-ranking IS leader, also known as Hajji Mutazz, was killed by a US air strike in Iraq on 18th August, according to the US government. Al-Hayali had a key operational role in the group, with the White House calling him a "primary co-ordinator" for the movement of people, weapons, vehicles and explosives between Iraq and Syria. He was reportedly in charge of the group's operations in Iraq, and helped to plan the offensive on the Iraqi city of Mosul which launched the group to international prominence last year.
Hassan Saeed al Jabouri and Radwan Taleb al Hamdouni
These two men—consecutive IS-appointed governors of Mosul—were killed in late 2014 and early 2015 by coalition air strikes. Al Jabouri, the second of the pair to die, had been in office for less then 25 days when he was brought down by a strike 29km south of the city in the village of Qayyara. The strikes were carried out in advance of a Kurdish-led attempt to retake lands around the city, but the main settlement remains under IS control.
