A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that a U.S. air drone strike in Syria killed Muhsin al-Fadhli, a top leader of al-Qaeda, earlier this month.

A release from the U.S. Department of Defense informs that the al-Qaeda operative was killed on July 8 in what is described as a “kinetic strike," while he was traveling in a vehicle near the Syrian town of Sarmada.

Jeff Davis, the Defense Department’s press operations chief, said that Fadhli was the leader of the Khorasan Group, an al-Qaeda splinter faction. In the past year, the U.S. has shifted its main counterterrorism focus toward the Islamic State instead of al-Qaeda. Despite this refocus, intelligence officials have maintained that the Khorasan group had become the cell in Syria which was most capable and intent upon striking the United States as well as its allies.

The 34-year-old Fadhli was atypical of other top al-Qaeda operatives as he tried to avoid the spotlight and had far less of a presence on social media than his fellow terrorist leaders.

Bruce O. Riedel, a former CIA analyst who is currently at the Brookings Institution, called Fadhli’s death “a significant blow to Al Qaeda’s top terror team.”

“Ayman Zawahri created the Khorasan Group to bring together the best operatives from across Al Qaeda to Syria to target the West, and now their leader is apparently dead,” Riedel told the New York Times.

President Obama first spoke of the Khorasan Group last September while he announced that he had ordered an airstrike against them in order to thwart what U.S. officials said was a terrorist plot directed at the West. 

Matthew G. Olsen, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is optimistic about what Fadhli’s death means to counterterrorism, saying: “While the threat they pose will persist, the loss of Muhsin’s leadership and experience is a real setback for the group.”