US raid allegedly killed Syrian undercover agent instead of Islamic
State group official
[December 05, 2025]
By OMAR ALBAM and ABBY SEWELL
DUMAYR, Syria (AP) — A raid by U.S. forces and a local Syrian group
aiming to capture an Islamic State group official instead killed a man
who had been working undercover gathering intelligence on the
extremists, family members and Syrian officials have told The Associated
Press.
The killing in October underscores the complex political and security
landscape as the United States begins working with interim Syrian
President Ahmad al-Sharaa in the fight against remnants of IS.
According to relatives, Khaled al-Masoud had been spying on IS for years
on behalf of the insurgents led by al-Sharaa and then for al-Sharaa’s
interim government, established after the fall of former President
Bashar Assad a year ago. Al-Sharaa’s insurgents were mainly Islamists,
some connected to al-Qaida, but enemies of IS who often clashed with it
over the past decade.
Neither U.S. nor Syrian government officials have commented on al-Masoud’s
death, an indication that neither side wants the incident to derail
improving ties. Weeks after the Oct. 19 raid, al-Sharaa visited
Washington and announced Syria would join the global coalition against
IS.
Still, al-Masoud’s death could be “quite a setback” for efforts to
combat IS, said Wassim Nasr, a senior research fellow with the Soufan
Center, a New York-based think tank focused on security issues.
Al-Masoud had been infiltrating IS in the southern deserts of Syria
known as the Badiya, one of the places where remnants of the extremist
group have remained active, Nasr said.
The raid targeting him was a result of “the lack of coordination between
the coalition and Damascus,” Nasr said.
In the latest sign of the increasing cooperation, the U.S. Central
Command said Sunday that American troops and forces from Syria’s
Interior Ministry had located and destroyed 15 IS weapons caches in the
south.
Confusion around the raid
The raid occurred in Dumayr, a town east of Damascus on the edge of the
desert. At around 3 a.m., residents woke to the sound of heavy vehicles
and planes.
Residents said U.S. troops conducted the raid alongside the Syrian Free
Army, a U.S.-trained opposition faction that had fought against Assad.
The SFA now officially reports to the Syrian Defense Ministry.
Al-Masoud’s cousin, Abdel Kareem Masoud, said he opened his door and saw
Humvees with U.S. flags on them.
“There was someone on top of one of them who spoke broken Arabic, who
pointed a machine gun at us and a green laser light and told us to go
back inside,” he said.
Khaled al-Masoud’s mother, Sabah al-Sheikh al-Kilani, said the forces
then surrounded her son’s house next door, where he was with his wife
and five daughters, and banged on the door.
Al-Masoud told them that he was with General Security, a force under
Syria’s Interior Ministry, but they broke down the door and shot him,
al-Kilani said.
They took him away, wounded, al-Kilani said. Later, government security
officials told the family he had been released but was in the hospital.
The family was then called to pick up his body. It was unclear when he
had died.
“How did he die? We don’t know,” his mother said. “I want the people who
took him from his children to be held accountable.”
Faulty intelligence
Al-Masoud’s family believes he was targeted based on faulty intelligence
provided by members of the Syrian Free Army.
Representatives of the SFA did not respond to requests for comment.
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Sabah al-Sheikh al-Kilani, the mother of Khaled al-Masoud, sits with
several of his daughters at the family home after he was killed
during a raid in the town of al-Dumayr, in the Damascus countryside,
Syria, Oct. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)
Al-Masoud had worked with al-Sharaa’s insurgent group, Hayat Tahrir
al-Sham, in its northwestern enclave of Idlib before Assad’s fall,
his cousin said. Then he returned to Dumayr and worked with the
security services of al-Sharaa’s government.
Two Syrian security officials and one political official, who spoke
on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to
comment publicly, confirmed that al-Masoud had been working with
Syria's interim government in a security role. Two of the officials
said he had worked on combating IS.
Initial media reports on the raid said it had captured an IS
official. But U.S. Central Command, which typically issues
statements when a U.S. operation kills or captures a member of the
extremist group in Syria, made no announcement.
A U.S. defense official, when asked for more information about the
raid and its target and whether it had been coordinated with Syria's
government, said, “We are aware of these reports but do not have any
information to provide.” The official spoke on condition of
anonymity in accordance with regulations.
Representatives of Syria’s defense and interior ministries, and of
U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack, declined to comment.
Increased coordination could prevent mistakes
At its peak in 2015, IS controlled a swath of territory across Iraq
and Syria half the size of the United Kingdom. It was notorious for
its brutality against religious minorities as well as Muslims not
adhering to the group’s extreme interpretation of Islam.
After years of fighting, the U.S.-led coalition broke the group's
last hold on territory in late 2019. Since then, U.S. troops in
Syria have been working to ensure IS does not regain a foothold. The
U.S. estimates IS still has about 2,500 members in Syria and Iraq.
U.S. Central Command last month said the number of IS attacks there
had fallen to 375 for the year so far, compared to 1,038 last year.
Fewer than 1,000 U.S. troops are believed to be operating in Syria,
carrying out airstrikes and conducting raids against IS cells. They
work mainly alongside the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in
the northeast and the Syrian Free Army in the south.
Now the U.S. has another partner: the security forces of the new
Syrian government.
Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor, has reported 52 incidents
in which civilians were harmed or killed in coalition operations in
Syria since 2020.
The group classified al-Masoud as a civilian.
Airwars director Emily Tripp said the group has seen "multiple
instances of what the U.S. call ‘mistakes,’” including a 2023 case
in which the U.S. military announced it had killed an al-Qaida
leader in a drone strike. The target later turned out to be a
civilian farmer.
It was unclear if the Oct. 19 raid went wrong due to faulty
intelligence or if someone deliberately fed the coalition false
information. Nasr said that in the past, feuding groups have
sometimes used the coalition to settle scores.
“That’s the whole point of having a hotline with Damascus, in order
to see who’s who on the ground,” he said.
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