‘Jihadi’ John Believed Killed in Airstrike

ABC NEWS –As the U.S. government is working today to confirm the death of “Jihadi John”, a U.S. official appeared confident the notorious ISIS executioner was taken out in what he called a “flawless” American airstrike. “He walked out of a building and got in the car. We struck it right after with zero collateral damage,” a counter-terrorism official told ABC News late Thursday. “The vehicle was on fire. It was a 100 percent flawless, direct hit.” “Jihadi John” essentially “evaporated” in the explosion, the official said. The Pentagon confirmed Thursday a U.S. strike had targeted “Jihadi John”, who was identified earlier this year as British national Mohammed Emwazi, and said the Defense Department is “assessing the results” of the operation. Pentagon spokesperson Peter Cook said the operation took place in Raqqa, Syria, the defacto capital of ISIS’s so-called caliphate. British Prime Minister David Cameron said this morning that if the strike was successful, it was an “act of self-defense” and “the right thing to do.” “I have always said that we would do whatever was necessary, whatever it took, to track down Emwazi and stop him taking the lives of others,” Cameron said. “Emwazi was a barbaric murderer… He posed an ongoing and serious threat to innocent civilians not only in Syria, but around the world, and in the United Kingdom too.” The world first came to know Emwazi, then only called “Jihadi John”, in August 2014, when he appeared as a black-clad, knife-weilding figure in a highly-produced video that purportedly showed Emwazi slicing the neck of American journalist and hostage James Foley. He reappeared in video after brutal video as they showed the gruesome deaths of other American and Western hostages. Emwazi was publicly identified as “Jihadi John” in February 2015 and since stopped showing up in ISIS videos. Diane Foley, mother of James Foley, told ABC News after hearing of Emwazi’s possible demise that it was “small solace” to the family. “This huge effort to go after this deranged man filled with hate when they can’t make half that effort to save the hostages while those young Americans were still alive,” said Foley, who has been a vocal critic of American hostage policy. “It’s unfortunate that the government doesn’t get it. They think it gives us solace, but it doesn’t.”