AP: US raid in Syria kills undercover agent instead of Islamic State official PHOTO

A U.S. raid in October intended to capture an Islamic State official instead killed Khaled al-Masoud, a man working undercover gathering intelligence on IS, family members and Syrian officials told The Associated Press.

Al-Masoud had been spying on IS for years, first for insurgents led by interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and later for Sharaa’s government.

“How did he die? We don’t know,” his mother, Sabah al-Sheikh al-Kilani, said. “I want the people who took him from his children to be held accountable.”

Experts say the incident highlights the risks of poor coordination. “The raid targeting him was a result of ‘the lack of coordination between the coalition and Damascus,’” said Wassim Nasr, senior research fellow at the Soufan Centre.

Sabah al-Sheikh al-Kilani, Khaled al-Masoud’s mother, points to bullet holes in his home after he was killed in a Dumayr raid, Syria, Oct. 28, 2025.

Al-Masoud’s family believes he was targeted based on faulty intelligence from the Syrian Free Army. U.S. and Syrian officials have not commented.

The raid underscores the complexity of U.S. operations in Syria, where fewer than 1,000 troops work alongside Kurdish forces, the Syrian Free Army, and now the security forces of Sharaa’s interim government to prevent IS from regaining a foothold.

Airwars, a conflict monitor, classified al-Masoud as a civilian. Emily Tripp, its director, noted the coalition has seen “multiple instances of what the U.S. calls ‘mistakes,’” including cases where civilians were mistakenly killed.

By Aghakazim Guliyev