Two MQ-9 Reaper drones made by General Atomics in Poway were reportedly used to kill the ISIS executioner known as “Jihadi John” in a strike on Thursday.
U.S. military spokesman Steve Warren said Friday officials were “reasonably certain” they had killed Mohamed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, with a Hellfire missile.
Emwazi, a British citizen, participated in the videos showing the sadistic murders of U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said targeting Emwazi was “the right thing to do.”
The BBC quoted sources as saying two Reaper drones carried out the attack, striking Emwazi in a car near the clock tower in Raqqa where ISIS carries out executions.
Warren said drone attacks have killed on average “one mid- to upper-level IS leader every two days” since May.
An opposition group in Raqqa, ISIS’ makeshift capital in Syria, posted this map of the strike area on Twitter:
#Rqqa the place of Drone Strike that killed jihadi john after the Drone Targeted his Car #ISIS close the area #Syria pic.twitter.com/tl0gWSJzn6
— الرقة تذبح بصمت (@Raqqa_SL) November 13, 2015
