Tag Archives: Drone Strike

Britain Kills Home Grown Jihadists in Syria

Two British citizens who fled to Syria to join with the terrorist group ISIS have been killed in an airstrike by British troops.

It marked the first time the British government has targeted terrorists who grew up in the UK.

Reyaad Khan and Ruhul Amin were killed when a Royal Air Force drone targeted their convoy near Raqqa on August 21st.  The drone was controlled either at RAF Waddington or by a British crew operating at a US airbase in Nevada.  

The strike was targeted at Khan; British officials say that Amin just had the bad luck of being in the vehicle with Khan.

Khan was shown last year in a recruitment video for the terrorist group.  He had been working to attempt to radicalize more British youths and bring them to Syria to join ISIS.  

A third Briton who had joined the terrorist group, Junaid Hussain, was killed in a separate US airstrike coordinated by the Brits.

“It was necessary and proportionate for the individual self-defense of the UK,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday.

“Both Junaid Hussain and Reyaad Khan were British nationals based in Syria who were involved in actively recruiting ISIS sympathizers and seeking to orchestrate specific and barbaric attacks against the west, including directing a number of planned terrorist attacks right here in Britain, such as plots to attack high-profile public commemorations, including those taking place this summer. We should be under no illusion. Their intention was the murder of British citizens.”

The slain terrorists reportedly had plotted to carry about attacks at major British events that were thwarted by government operatives.  One even targeted Queen Elizabeth at an event in May.

“We took this action because there was no alternative. In this area, there is no government we can work with. We have no military on the ground to detain those preparing plots,” Cameron added.  “And there was nothing to suggest that Reyaad Khan would ever leave Syria or desist from his desire to murder us at home. So we had no way of preventing his planned attacks on our country without taking direct action.”

British Born ISIS Hacker and Recruiter Killed in Drone Strike

A British citizen who intelligence officials say was a head of terrorist group ISIS’ cyberwarfare division has been killed in a U.S. drone strike.

Juaniad Hussain, also called Abu Hussain al-Britani, died in an airstrike in Raqqa, Syria.  U.S. officials say they have a “high level of confidence” that Hussain is dead.

Hussain has been confirmed as the target of the attack as he moved in a convoy.  The strike was part of a 48 hour campaign aimed at the terrorist’s power structure in their self-proclaimed capital.

“This is a great intelligence success,” one U.S. official told CNN.

Cybersecurity experts say that while Hussain was more of a nuisance than serious hacker, he was especially dangerous in recruiting hackers and others to join the terrorist group.

“He wasn’t a serious threat. He was most likely a nuisance hacker,” Adam Meyers, vice president of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, told the London Independent.   “It was his involvement in recruitment, communications and other ancillary support that would have made him a target.”

Hussain had spent six months in prison for hacking the personal address book of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2012.  He left for Syria soon after the sentence.