US conducts air strike in Syria targeting Jihadi John

WASHINGTON: The US has conducted airstrikes in Syria targeting Jihadi John, the Islamic State's burly masked executioner seen in videos executing hostages, the Pentagon said.

"We are assessing the results of tonight's operation," the Pentagon Press Secretary, Peter Cook said in a late night statement yesterday.

The Pentagon said the air strike took place in Raqa.

26-year-old British terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, is believed to have left the terror group and went on the run in Syria, trying to head to North Africa.

"Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the murders of US journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages," Cook said in a statement.

He was identified as the mysterious knife-wielding man in the gruesome ISIS execution videos in February. He was dubbed Jihadi John by the British press because he was one of four British terrorists whom their prisoners named "the Beatles."

Known to be a computer science graduate who lived in west London before he left for Syria in 2013, Emwazi had been known to security services and was detained several times as long ago as 2009. Though interrogated several times, he was never arrested or charged.