The US reportedly took out a high-value target in its latest drone strikes in Syria: French bomb-maker David (Daoud) Drugeon, a 24-year-old convert to Islam and member of the Khorasan Group, "well-placed military sources" tell Fox News. The Predator drone likely fatally injured the driver of the vehicle in Idlib province; a second person, thought to be Drugeon, was killed. The Pentagon confirms it carried out airstrikes yesterday against the hard-core al-Qaeda offshoot, but said it's still doing "bomb damage assessment" and can't confirm it was Drugeon who died. A defense official tells Foreign Policy that a total of five airstrikes were carried out. Drugeon was the intended target, defense sources tell Fox News.
Drugeon, one of al-Qaeda's most notorious bomb-makers, converted to Islam after his parents divorced when he was 14. He reportedly set out to learn Arabic in Egypt in 2010, then headed to Afghanistan to help al-Qaeda against the US. One of his most famous skills, according to French intelligence agents: dipping clothes in explosives using a technique that can pass through airport security undetected. Drugeon was also rumored to be a French intelligence agent who defected, according to War on the Rocks, which cites an "explosive" McClatchy article. (More Syria stories.)
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