US military officials walking back claims drone strike killed al-Qaeda leader: report

The Pentagon now doubts whether a drone strike in Syria earlier this month killed a top al-Qaeda leader, according to The Washington Post.

The May 3 strike could have instead killed Lotfi Hassan Misto, 56, a father of 10 who was tending to his sheep in a quiet town in northwest Syria when the Hellfire missile struck, The Post reported.

U.S. Central Command (Centcom), which oversaw the operation, had claimed the missile strike had targeted a senior al-Qaeda figure shortly after the attack was carried out.

But senior Defense officials are now hesitating on whether the correct target was killed, according to The Post.

“We are no longer confident we killed a senior AQ official,” a senior Defense official told the newspaper.

Another official said they were still positive the strike killed a member of al-Qaeda, a U.S.-designated terrorist group.

Centcom is investigating the incident, according to The Post, which interviewed members of the victim’s family and identified the strike as occurring at coordinates near Misto’s home and chicken farm.

Since launching sweeping global counterterrorism operations after 9/11, the U.S. has frequently come under scrutiny for conducting lethal strikes that have killed civilians when looking for suspected military targets.

More recently, a failed August 2021 strike in Afghanistan killed 10 civilians instead of a key ISIS-K target.

The Defense Department reported “execution errors” in the lead-up to the strike but found no violations of war and did not punish anyone for the botched attack.

Last year, Democrats called for President Biden to overhaul counterterrorism and drone strike operations, leading to a new policy signed in October requiring the commander-in-chief to approve any suspect added to a terror list who can then be targeted by military action.