A drone strike carried out Tuesday by the American-led coalition in northwestern Syria allegedly eliminated a senior member of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), U.S. officials claimed early this week.

The U.S. Central Command announced the kill in a press release on April 4.

The unilateral strike targeted Khalid ‘Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, who is alleged to have planned attacks in Europe and played a large part in developing ISIS in Turkey.

“ISIS continues to represent a threat to the region and beyond,” said Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the CENTCOM commander, in the release.

The death of al-Jabouri is expected to “temporarily disrupt the organization’s ability to plot external attacks,” per the release.

Since a Kurdish and Arab coalition supported by U.S., British, and French special forces successfully removed ISIS from its last stronghold in eastern Syria in 2019, the extremist group has reportedly been operating primarily from sleeper cells.

Meanwhile, the U.S. forces have led a series of attacks to eliminate alleged top ISIS officials in an effort to undermine the group’s terrorist attacks, per CBS News.

Most of these U.S. strikes have been centered in the rebel-controlled northern Syrian province of Idlib. Here, an armed group called Horas al-Din, which means “Guardians of Religion” in Arabic, has taken over. Horas al-Din is reported to be an extremist offshoot of al Qaeda that formed in 2018.

Two men were killed by a U.S. drone strike in February, reportedly one identified as a Horas al-Din member and the other as a senior member of ISIS by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, per Associate Press News.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), based in the United Kingdom, reported further on the latest strike.

The SOHR and its chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said that the man identified by the U.S. as Khalid ‘Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri had moved to the province 10 days earlier. He was reportedly struck while speaking on a phone outside a house he was renting on the road of “Kaftin-Kelli.”

He had claimed to be a refugee named “Khaled” from the eastern Syrian city of Deir el-Zour. This claim could have been made to explain his Iraqi dialect of Arabic, which is also spoken in this city, per AP News.

In February, ISIS reportedly kidnapped roughly 75 truffle hunters outside the town of Palmyra. While 25 were eventually released, 16 others were killed, and the rest are still missing.