00:00The U.S. has killed a terrorist with links to infamous terror group al-Qaeda.
00:07U.S. Central Command announced the killing of Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab al-Ahmad.
00:14CENCOM said he was killed by a strike in Syria.
00:17He was not a direct member of al-Qaeda, but rather Ansar al-Islam.
00:21That's a group with a documented history of helping al-Qaeda plan terror attacks around the world.
00:26They were formed in an area in Iraqi Kurdistan, a remote mountainous region.
00:32I've actually done research on the ground there, in their zone.
00:35It was way up in the mountains, right on the Iranian border.
00:39And what makes this group Ansar al-Islam, which is, as you mentioned, an offshoot of al-Qaeda,
00:45what makes them unique is that they're not Arabs, like most of these terrorist groups in the Middle East.
00:50They're ethnic Kurds.
00:51Williams said they fled the region when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.
00:57He said both al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam are diminished organizations at this point.
01:02And al-Qaeda has been decimated.
01:04So this is a blast from the past, no pun intended.
01:08And I'm heartened by this.
01:09This shows that we still have a counterterrorism presence in this very strategic zone in Syria,
01:17even though just this April, Trump decided yet again to yank the troops out of Syria.
01:25I think we've kept a small footprint there.
01:27Williams said while it's encouraging to see this, the real threat remains ISIS, especially in Syria.
01:33Syria is a historic springboard for ISIS.
01:39ISIS stands for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
01:41And, you know, we have had a president, Donald Trump, who's gotten tired of having troop deployments for some reason in Syria, but not Iraq.
01:51And he's been trying to yank them out of that country ever since 2018.
01:56And this is not good for American security.
01:59An ISIS pledged lone wolf killed 15 people in a terror attack in January in New Orleans.
02:04For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan.
02:07If you want more on this story, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit san.com.
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