US military certain drone strike killed IS militant

Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group, told a Pentagon briefing that Mohammed Emwazi, a.k.a. ‘Jihadi John’, was thought to have been killed in the Syrian town of Raqqa by a US drone firing a Hellfire missile, but that the military still needed final verification. A US official told The Associated Press that a drone had targeted a vehicle in which Emwazi was believed to be travelling. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity. Two senior Turkish officials also reported that a suspected British associate of ‘Jihadi John’ is now detained in Turkey. The man is thought to be Aine Lesley Davis, one of a group of British Islamists believed to have been assigned to guard foreign prisoners in Syria. British Prime Minister David Cameron said the strike had been a joint effort and that British intelligence agencies were working around the clock to find the British-accented militant, whom Cameron called the militant group’s lead executioner.” Cameron also said the US strike had been “an act of self-defense” and the right thing to do. He said targeting Emwazi was “a strike at the heart” of the Islamic State group. US Secretary of State John Kerry, appearing at a news conference in the Tunisian capital on Friday told reporters that extremists “need to know this: your days are numbered and you will be defeated.”