Written by The Dark Knight of Sports LaShawn Encarnacion
Multiple reports are confirming that the U.S. in cooperation with its Allied Powers has sent in and struck down an area where ISIS Leader Jihadi John was believed to be occupying. U.S. unmanned drone was sent in early this morning in a effort to end his tyranny and the organization known as ISIS.
U.S. drone strike targeted a vehicle in Syria believed to be transporting the masked Islamic State militant known as “Jihadi John,” according to American officials. Whether the strike killed the British man who appears in several videos depicting the beheadings of Western hostages was not known, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday.
Mohammed Emwazi was the target of an airstrike in Raqqa, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement. Officials were assessing the results of the strike, he said.
A U.S. Official told the Associate Press that the drone was targeting a vehicle that was believed to be carrying Emwazi but was not allowed to disclose anything to the public for security concerns and requested anonymity.
Cameron said officials are not yet certain whether a U.S. drone strike killed Emwazi. He said the strike had been a joint effort and that British intelligence agencies were working around the clock to find the British-accented militant, whom Cameron called the militant group’s “lead executioner.”
Cameron also said the U.S. strike had been “an act of self-defense” and the right thing to do. He said targeting Emwazi was “a strike at the heart” of the Islamic State group.
Emwazi, believed to be in his mid-20s, has been described by a former hostage as a bloodthirsty psychopath who took great pleasure in threatening Western hostages. Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, who had been in Syria since 2013 was one of these hostages and was beheaded by ISIS group.
Those being held by three British-sounding captors nicknamed them “the Beatles” with “Jihadi John” a reference to Beatles member John Lennon, Espinosa said in recalling his months as one of more than 20 hostages.
Cameron said Britain has been “working, with the United States, literally around the clock to track him down.”
“This was a combined effort,” he said. “And the contribution of both our countries was essential.”
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair who is Jerusalem now spoke to reporters about the updated situation.
“If these reports are correct and several of those people from ISIS were killed today, I mean these people who were brutalizing, terrorizing, murdering people, of course it is really important that we take the fight to them and make them realize that they are going to be contested heavily.”
“It’s no great secret; I think it is essential for Britain to play its part in the fight against this hideous extremism that is brutalizing the lives of so many people,” Blair said. “It is important we play our full part alongside America and other allies and so if the UK government wanted to commit Britain to this fight in Syria, where after all ISIS are really headquartered, of course I will be fully supportive of that.”
Among those beheaded by Islamic State militants in videos posted online since August 2014 were U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto.
The beheading of Foley, 40, of Rochester, New Hampshire, was deemed by IS to be its response to U.S. airstrikes. The release of the video, on Aug. 19, 2014, horrified and outraged the civilized world but was followed the next month by videos showing the be-headings of Sotloff and Haines and, in October, of Henning.
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