US air strike targets 'Jihadi John'

The U.S. military has carried out an air strike in Syria targeting Mohammed Emwazi, the British man known as “Jihadi John” who fought with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and appeared in a series of videos showing the deaths of hostages.

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said it was unclear if Emwazi died in the strike.

"Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the murders of U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages,” said Cook.

He said the U.S. was still assessing the effectiveness of the strike, which took place around the Syrian city of Raqqa. It was not immediately clear how long it might take for a final determination.

An unnamed U.S. official told The Associated Press a drone had targeted a vehicle believed to be carrying Emwazi. The official is not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

The operation had been in the works for days, according to an unnamed U.S. official cited by Reuters. Key details of the strike are unclear, including how the U.S. located Emwazi and how it planned the operation.

If his death is confirmed, it would be an important milestone in the U.S.-led campaign against the group and would come more than a year after President Barack Obama promised to fight on against ISIL after the deaths of American hostages.

ISIL deemed the beheading of Foley, 40, of Rochester, New Hampshire its response to U.S. airstrikes. The release of the video, on Aug. 19, 2014 was followed the next month by videos showing the beheadings of Sotloff and Haines and, in October, of Henning.

In ISIL videos, "Jihadi John" dressed entirely in black, a balaclava covering all but his eyes and the bridge of his nose. A menacing symbol of ISIL brutality, he used the videos to threaten the West, admonish its Arab allies and taunt Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, who had promised to "hunt down" ISIL. 

Emwazi was identified as Jihadi John in February, when government sources and radicalization experts said they believe the man nicknamed "Jihadi John" by media outlets was Emwazi, a Londoner from a middle-class family who graduated from college with a degree in computer programming. 

At the time, the Washington Post, which first reported Emwazi’s name, cited a "close friend" as saying Emwazi is the masked, black-clad fighter brandishing a knife and speaking with an English accent in videos on the beheadings of hostages including Americans and Britons.

Emwazi, a computer programmer, was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin. His parents moved to Britain in 1993 after their hopes of obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship were quashed.

Emwazi has been described by a former hostage as a bloodthirsty psychopath who enjoyed threatening Western hostages. Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, who had been held in Syria for more than six months after his abduction in September 2013, said Emwazi would explain precisely how the ISIL fighters would carry out a beheading.

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.

Al Jazeera with wire services