The US military launched an air strike in Syria targeting ISIL fighter Mohammed Emwazi – better known as “Jihadi John” – who participated in the beheading videos of two American journalists and the killing of several other captives.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the air strike carried out on Thursday in Raqqa targeted Emwazi, a British citizen.

Cook said it was unclear whether Jihadi John was killed.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press a drone targeted a vehicle believed to be carrying Emwazi.

Jihadi John is in the ISIL videos showing the killings of journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto, and a number of other hostages.

Emwazi, a computer programmer from London, was born in Kuwait to a stateless family of Iraqi origin. His parents moved to Britain in 1993 after their hopes of obtaining Kuwaiti citizenship were quashed. Al Jazeera