“Jihadi John,” who murdered several Western captives in propaganda videos for ISIS, may be dead.
The terrorist, Mohamed Emwazi, was targeted in an airstrike in Raqqa, Syria on Thursday. “”We are assessing the results of tonight’s operation and will provide additional information as and where appropriate,” Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said in a statement late Thursday evening.
U.S. officials told CNN that they believe Emwazi was killed. “Emwazi was in a vehicle at the time of the strike, which was launched from a drone,” CNN reports.
Emwazi, as a British citizen, has played an important role in propaganda, “symboliz[ing] IS’s global identity” ever since he was first seen killing Western hostages on video. “[He] 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,” Cook said.