Aussie jihadists killed in US airstrikes
Two Australian Islamic State radicals, including a top recruiter and the sister of the teenager who killed NSW police accountant Curtis Cheng seven months ago, have been killed in separate US airstrikes.
The US told the Australian Government yesterday that notorious Islamic State recruiter Neil Christopher Prakash and Sydney woman Shadi Jabar Khalil Mohammad were dead.
Prakash, 24, from Melbourne and also known by the jihadist name Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, was killed by a US airstrike in the Iraqi city of Mosul on April 29.
Of Fijian and Cambodian descent and born into a Buddhist family, Prakash made many propaganda videos for Islamic State and aided terrorist attacks.
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Prakash has been linked to several Australia-based attack plans, including on Anzac Day commemorations in Melbourne, and has called for lone-wolf attacks against the US.
Government sources said Prakash’s death aided the disruption and degradation of Islamic State’s ability to recruit vulnerable Australians for terror acts.
The dangerous militant who groomed would-be extremists using social media was wrongly thought to have been killed in January.
Shadi Jabar, who was in her 20s, was killed in a US airstrike near Al Bab, Syria, on April 22, with her Sudanese husband Abu Sa’ad al-Sudani, according to the US military.
They were both active recruiters of foreign fighters for IS and have been encouraging attacks against Western interests.
Shadi Jabar is the sister of Farhad Mohammad, 15, who shot dead father-of-two Mr Cheng outside Parramatta police station on October 2.
She had flown out of Australia for Istanbul the day before the shooting.
A Government spokesman said: “These incidents remind us that Australians who engage in terrorist activity and move into overseas conflict zones are placing themselves and others at significant risk.”
In a propaganda video before he left for Syria in 2013, Prakash said: “I was shocked at myself. I was thinking, ‘What am I doing? I have a good life here. I have a job, I have an income, I have a car, I have a house. What sacrifice have I done for the sake of Allah?’
“I thought about the people overseas in the Muslim lands that are suffering.”
