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By Sean Rayment
Britain’s elite special forces have been directly involved in the killing of more than 4,000 Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq over the past 10 years.
Troops from the SAS, the SBS and the Special Reconnaissance Regiment have launched ambushes, carried out sniping attacks, called in air strikes and directed heavily armed drones against hundreds of Islamic State (IS) strongholds.
The covert missions formed part of Operation Shader, the military codename for operations against IS terrorists in Syria and Iraq, launched in 2014.
Defence sources have told National Security News that almost all of the carefully planned attacks took place with little collateral damage and minimal civilian casualties.
The UK Ministry of Defence has only ever confirmed that a single civilian has been killed in hundreds of military operations.
Sources also said that the role played by UK special forces, working alongside the RAF in dismantling terrorist groups, has helped to save the lives of thousands of civilians in Syria, Europe and the UK.
The most recent attack took place in early September, when members of the special forces coordinated two strikes against terrorists in Syria.
In the first, a wanted terrorist was killed in a drone strike just as he was about to get into a car in Aleppo.
In a second mission three weeks later, on 28 September, another terrorist was killed after being positively identified by UK special forces. The covert team called in a drone which followed the target as he travelled on foot and by motorcycle. Sources said the target was eventually neutralised in a Hellfire missile strike.
A source said: “There are people alive in the UK today because of covert missions carried out by the special forces in Iraq and Syria. Most of these operations get very little publicity, but they are incredibly dangerous and require a great deal of courage to execute.”
In 2020, another operation was launched after a terrorist network, arms dump and communications hub were identified inside a cave complex in northern Iraq.
A defence source said that the heavily defended caves could not be cleared of terrorists without a significant loss of British lives.
Instead of launching a ground assault, members of the UKSF directed an RAF Reaper drone into the area.
The MoD subsequently reported that the blast penetrated deep inside the “cave network”, indicating that the weapon’s effect had reached far inside the caves.
Defence Minister Al Carns, a former SBS officer, told National Security News: “I am proud of the UK’s leading role in combating Daesh. From the challenges of intelligence gathering to conducting precision air strikes and training partner forces, the skills of our Armed Forces personnel and their world-leading capabilities are second to none.
“As always, we will continue to protect the UK by eliminating dangerous terrorists who pose a threat to us at home and abroad. We will relentlessly take the fight to Daesh for as long as it takes, ensuring there can be no hiding place for extremist terrorists.”
