A coalition airstrike has killed a senior Islamic State leader known as the "amir of suicide bombers" for recruiting foreign fighters to wage suicide attacks in Iraq and Syria.
A senior U.S. official said July 2 that Tariq bin Tahar al-'Awni al-Harzi, a Tunisian, and another fighter with him were killed by a U.S. drone strike in Syria, and that there were no reports of any civilian casualties in the operation.
According to Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis, Harzi was killed June 16 in Shaddadi. He said that Harzi was responsible for moving fighters and weapons from Libya to Syria, and helped with the movement of foreign fighters back and forth across the Syria-Iraq border.
Last September, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Harzi a global terrorist and called him the "amir of suicide bombers" for his role in recruiting foreigners to martyr themselves.
Davis said Harzi's death will hurt the Islamic State's ability to move foreign fighters in and out of the region.
