Military Reports

Military Reports

UK MoD for August 21, 2015 – August 22, 2015
Original
Annotated

Report Date

August 22, 2015

Notes

Separate UK announcement. As part of a non-Coalition action, an RAF Reaper drone also carried out the targeted killing of three alleged ISIL fighters at Raqaa in Syria – two of them British – as the Prime Minister later announced on September 7th 2015

Today I can inform the House that in an act of self-defence and after meticulous planning Reyaad Khan was killed in a precision air strike carried out on 21 August by an RAF remotely piloted aircraft while he was travelling in a vehicle in the area of Raqqah in Syria.

In addition to Reyaad Khan who was the target of the strike, 2 ISIL associates were also killed, 1 of whom – Ruhul Amin, has been identified as a UK national. They were ISIL fighters and I can confirm there were no civilian casualties.

Mr Speaker, we took this action because there was no alternative. In this area, there is no government we can work with. We have no military on the ground to detain those preparing plots. And there was nothing to suggest that Reyaad Khan would ever leave Syria or desist from his desire to murder us at home. So we had no way of preventing his planned attacks on our country without taking direct action.

The US administration has also confirmed that Junaid Hussain [also British] was killed in an American airstrike on 24 August in Raqqah.

Report Date

August 22, 2015

Notes

Separate UK announcement. As part of a non-Coalition action, an RAF Reaper drone also carried out the targeted killing of three alleged ISIL fighters at Raqaa in Syria – two of them British – as the Prime Minister later announced on September 7th 2015

Today I can inform the House that in an act of self-defence and after meticulous planning Reyaad Khan was killed in a precision air strike carried out on 21 August by an RAF remotely piloted aircraft while he was travelling in a vehicle in the area of Raqqah in Syria.

In addition to Reyaad Khan who was the target of the strike, 2 ISIL associates were also killed, 1 of whom – Ruhul Amin, has been identified as a UK national. They were ISIL fighters and I can confirm there were no civilian casualties.

Mr Speaker, we took this action because there was no alternative. In this area, there is no government we can work with. We have no military on the ground to detain those preparing plots. And there was nothing to suggest that Reyaad Khan would ever leave Syria or desist from his desire to murder us at home. So we had no way of preventing his planned attacks on our country without taking direct action.

The US administration has also confirmed that Junaid Hussain [also British] was killed in an American airstrike on 24 August in Raqqah.