Islamic State militant Jihadi John – a former British computer student from London – was targeted by UK and US forces in an airstrike that killed him back in 2015
The cruel ISIS executioner Jihadi John was clutching a kebab when he was killed in a British drone strike, according to a top military chief.
MI6 managed to track the Islamic State[1] fighter to a takeaway in 2015 before calling in a strike. Mission operators had to wait for a boy that was with him to leave the scene before pushing the button.
London-born Mohammed Emwazi[2] left Britain to join the terror group with three fellow Brits, who became infamously known as the IS Beatles. They were part of a torture and execution squad who murdered at least 29 people.
READ MORE: Israel threatens Greta Thunberg with ‘terror cell’ jail for her new Gaza flotilla[3]READ MORE: Israel says ISIS head Muhammad Abd al-Aziz Abu Zayda ‘eliminated’ in Gaza strike[4]
The mission to take him out in the Syrian city of Raqqa was led by drone specialists from the Royal Air Force and US Air Force, who were operating from Qatar[5] using intelligence fed to them from agents inside Syria.
They told The Sun: “We’d been monitoring Emwazi six weeks and identified a pattern in which he’d visit a building near his mosque.
“He’d arrive in a 4×4 and stay for 3-4 minutes. The team asked MI6 about the building and it came back that it was a kebab shop. One day he walked out of the kebab shop there and the boy ran off to play football. It was our chance.”
The air forces unleashed a drone carrying a Hellfire missile, but the boy suddenly returned – which almost lead the operators to abort the strike.
However, cars at the scene blocked him from harm so they continued with the hit.
The official said: “Emwazi was evaporated, kebab in hand.”
Just last week, his fellow ISIS[6] Beatle – El Shafee Elsheikh, or Jihadi Ringo – made an application to be transferred from his current US max security prison to one in the UK.
It comes as security experts warn of the “real and present danger” the resurgence of the Islamic State in Africa poses to the UK.
The extremist group, which horrified the world[7] with its beheading videos after seizing large swathes of Syria[8] and Iraq[9] in 2014, was declared defeated in Syria in 2019. But it is now using advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and social media, which is posing a new challenge to security services, a UN Security Council meeting was told this week.
The UN has seen a uptick of activity by IS in the Sahel – in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – and in West Africa the group has emerged “as a prolific producer of terrorist propaganda and attracted foreign terrorist fighters, primarily from within the region,” said Vladimir Voronkov, who heads the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism.
References
- ^ Islamic State (www.mirror.co.uk)
- ^ Mohammed Emwazi (www.mirror.co.uk)
- ^ Israel threatens Greta Thunberg with ‘terror cell’ jail for her new Gaza flotilla (www.mirror.co.uk)
- ^ Israel says ISIS head Muhammad Abd al-Aziz Abu Zayda ‘eliminated’ in Gaza strike (www.mirror.co.uk)
- ^ Qatar (www.mirror.co.uk)
- ^ ISIS (www.mirror.co.uk)
- ^ world (www.mirror.co.uk)
- ^ Syria (www.mirror.co.uk)
- ^ Iraq (www.mirror.co.uk)