US commandos killed a senior Islamic State group leader in a nighttime raid into Syria, US officials said Saturday, as IS jihadists seized the northern part of Syria’s ancient Palmyra.
Across the borders, IS fought Iraqi army reinforcements in the western city of Ramadi, while Turkey said its armed forces shot down a Syrian helicopter which violated its air space.
US special forces raided Al-Omar in east Syria on Friday night to capture senior IS leader Abu Sayyaf and his wife Umm Sayyaf, US officials said.
The bold operation, with elite commandos striking at IS’s inner circle, was a rare use of “boots on the ground” by the United States, which has fought the jihadists almost entirely from the air.
White House national security spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said Abu Sayyaf, who played a senior role in IS’s lucrative oil operations, “was killed when he engaged US forces.”
His wife was being held in military detention in Iraq.
Al-Omar, one of the largest oil fields in Syria, lies in oil-rich Deir Ezzor province. Like much of Deir Ezzor, Al-Omar remains under IS control.
US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter called the operation a “significant blow” to IS.
Meehan said US forces based out of Iraq had conducted the raid “with the full consent” of Iraqi authorities.
US forces suffered no casualties, American officials said, without giving details on the number of troops involved.
Members of the elite Delta special operations unit descended on Sayyaf’s compound in Black Hawk helicopters and Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, a defence official told AFP.
In a firefight, US troops killed “about a dozen” armed militants, the official said, on condition of anonymity. At one point, fighting took place “at very close quarters, and there was hand-to-hand combat.”
– IS enters Palmyra –
In central Syria, IS jihadists stormed and seized control of most of Palmyra’s northern neighbourhoods, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“IS advanced and took control of most of northern Palmyra, and there are fierce clashes happening now,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, the monitoring group’s director.
The official Syrian news agency SANA quoted a miliary source as saying regime forces had prevented IS fighters from seizing a hilltop southwest of the Islamic citadel.
The head of Syria’s antiquities department, Mamoum Abdulkarim, meanwhile, voiced extreme concern for the UNESCO world heritage site, located to Palmyra’s southwest.
“I am living in a state of terror,” Abdulkarim told AFP in a telephone call.
He said IS “will blow everything up. They will destroy everything,” if they enter the site, adding that many of Palmyra’s artefacts, like elaborate tombs, could not be moved.
IS began its offensive on Palmyra on Wednesday and has since inched closer to the ancient metropolis, executing at least 49 civilians in two days, according to the Observatory.
Fearing the destruction of Palmyra, known as the “pearl of the desert,” UNESCO has called on the UN Security Council to act in order to save one of the Middle East’s historic treasures.
– 48 dead in air raids –
In northwest Syria, at least 48 civilians, including nine children, were killed on Saturday in regime air raids on Idlib province, the Observatory said.
It said the air strikes targeted rebel-held Idlib city and the towns of Saraqeb and Kafr Awid.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s defence minister said armed forces shot down a Syrian helicopter that had violated Turkish air space on Saturday.
“A Syrian helicopter was downed that violated the border for a period of five minutes within a seven mile (11 kilometre) limit,” Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz said, quoted by the Dogan news agency.
Syrian state television had earlier indicated the aircraft was a drone and vehemently denied it could have been a manned aircraft.
In Iraq, IS fighters tightened their siege on the last government positions in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, a day after they seized the city’s government headquarters.
Taking control of Ramadi would constitute the gro
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