Pentagon 'Reasonably Certain' Jihadi John Killed in US Airstrike

Earlier, the Pentagon said in a statement that an airstrike carried out by a US warplane in Syria on Thursday had targeted the ISIL militant, best known as "Jihadi John," who appeared in gruesome videos of the killings of American and British hostages.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States is fairly sure that ISIL terrorist Jihadi John was killed by a US airstrike, coalition spokesperson Steven Warren said on Friday.

"We [the United States] are reasonably certain that we killed the target that we intended to kill, which is Jihadi John," Warren stated.

The US fired a hellfire air-to-surface missile that targeted Mohamed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John, in Raqqa, Syria on Thursday, Warren added.

Mohamed Emwazi, a 26-year-old British national of Kuwaiti descent, appeared in a number of videos depicting the beheading of British and US aid workers and journalists, including James Foley and Alan Henning.

On Friday, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said it was not yet certain if Mohamed Emwazi was killed in the US airstrike.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said earlier that Washington was still evaluating the effectiveness of the strike in the de facto capital of Islamic State, Raqqa, and that it was not yet clear if the extremist had been successfully eliminated.

Mohammed Emwazi was a London-based British citizen and computer programing graduate. He appeared in videos released by Islamic State last year that showed the killings of US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and US aid worker Peter Kassig.

The videos also showed the deaths of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and other hostages.