Steven Sotloff Killer ‘Jihadi John’ Reportedly Killed in US Airstrike
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A British jihadist who killed the American Jewish journalist Steven Sotloff and other Westerners in Syria is said to have been killed in a U.S. Airforce strike.
Unnamed U.S. and British officials and military sources indicated with certainty that Mohammed Emwazi, whom the British media dubbed “Jihadi John,” was killed in a drone strike in Raqqa, Syria on Thursday, the Daily Telegraph of London reported.
But Pentagon Spokesman Peter Cook did not specify whether Emwazi had been killed, saying in a statement that “we are assessing the results of tonight’s operation and will provide additional information as and where appropriate.”
An unnamed high-ranking expert told the BBC that there is a “high degree of certainty” that Emwazi was killed. This follows another source telling Fox News the United States is 99 percent sure of his death.
Emwazi, who was born in Kuwait and moved to the United Kingdom, grew up in northwest London’s Queen’s Park neighborhood with his two sisters, mother and father. He traveled to the Middle East sometime in 2013 to join Sunni terrorists fighting with the Islamic State in that country and Iraq.
Dressed in all black with a balaclava covering all but his eyes and the ridge of his nose and a holster under his left arm, he reappeared in videos of the beheadings of US journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines and American aid worker Peter Kassig and others.
He shocked many Westerners when he spoke to the camera in with an mistakable London accent.
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