Islamic State crisis: US special forces in Syria raid

Eastern Syria's oil has been a key source of revenue for IS

Abu Sayyaf helped direct oil, gas and financial operations for IS, as well as holding a military role,the US Department of Defense statement said.The US says its special forces have killed a senior Islamic State (IS) member and captured his wife in a rare raid in eastern Syria.

It said forces tried to capture him, but he was killed after engaging them.

Oil and gas have been an important source of revenue for IS, which controls territory in Syria and Iraq.

The operation was authorized by President Barack Obama and was carried out by forces based in Iraq.

None of the US troops involved in the overnight operation was killed or injured, the White House said.

It said that Abu Sayyaf's wife, Umm Sayyaf, is suspected of being an IS member and of being complicit in the enslavement of a young Yazidi woman who was rescued in the raid.

Umm Sayyaf has been taken into military detention in Iraq.

Oil and gas have been an important source of revenue for IS, which took control of large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq last year.

Details of Abu Sayyaf's real identity were not immediately clear, and there was little information on jihadist websites, though an unnamed US official told the Associated Press that he was a Tunisian citizen.

Syrian state media reported earlier on Saturday that government forces had killed at least 40 IS fighters, including a man they described as IS's "oil minister", in an attack in Deir al-Zour province on the country's largest oil field.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which uses activists inside Syria, said the report was incorrectly taking credit for the US raid.

The US said the operation in Syria was conducted "with the full consent of Iraqi authorities", though Reuters news agency reported that it did not warn the Syrian government in advance.

"We have warned [President Bashar al-Assad's] regime not to interfere with our ongoing efforts against [IS] inside of Syria," it quoted National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan as saying.

One source with contacts in Deir al-Zour told the BBC that the operation lasted for about 30 minutes around dawn in the residential quarters of the al-Omar oil field, which houses about 500 families of IS fighters.

The bodies of 13 IS fighters, as well as many more who were injured, were later brought to the town of al-Mayadeen, he said.

The US has been carrying out air strikes against IS in Iraq and Syria since August last year. Shortly after they began, the Pentagon said there had been a failed ground operation in Syria to free American hostages - the only other raid inside the country that it has acknowledged.

Over the past week there has been fierce fighting against IS in both Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi forces have been battling IS in the city of Ramadi, where militants seized key buildings on Friday. In Syria, government forces have been trying to drive back IS fighters from the desert World Heritage Site of Palmyra.

On Wednesday, the Iraqi government said IS's second-in-command had been killed in a US-led coalition air strike in northern Iraq - a claim that has not been confirmed by the US.

Also this week, IS released an audio message that it said was from its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. If verified, it would be his first such message for several months.