ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - A suspected Islamic State (ISIS) operative was killed Sunday when an airstrike, reportedly carried out by the US-led international coalition, targeted his residence in northwest Syria’s Idlib province, a war monitor reported.

“Hashem Mahyou al-Qudour, known as ‘Hashem al-Raslan,’ who previously worked with a faction that pledged allegiance to ISIS, was killed a short while ago when his house was targeted by an airstrike in al-Tamanah area in southern Idlib,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. 

It follows another operation last month by the US-led coalition in Idlib that killed Salah Numan, a prominent ISIS leader and Iraqi national. 

In 2022, a US-led coalition raid in Idlib took out ISIS emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, in an operation conducted with Iraqi intelligence support. 

ISIS took control of swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in 2014, announcing its self-proclaimed caliphate with the Iraqi city of Mosul as its capital. They were territorially defeated with assistance from the US-led coalition forces in Iraq by 2017 and in Syria by 2019.

Despite its territorial defeat, the militant group continues to pose a security risk to Syrian and Iraqi security through sleeper cells and hit-and-run operations.